Run a tournament safely from setup through final backup
This detailed guide follows the five-stage Guided Setup and current Live Control workflow. Use it with the searchable FAQ when a problem needs more detail.
Start here
- Resume with Open Previous Tournament, or start a new event in Event Setup. Keep one controlling Director tab.
- Save Event Information, then Save Format and Rules. Import and check the roster before Review and Build Tournament.
- After the first successful build, Check and Start opens and runs Tournament Check automatically. Connect Digital mats through Device Links. Resolve Must fix items and review Review before starting warnings.
- Choose Publish Online or Continue Locally, then Start Tournament & Open Live Control. Watch Live Mats and Event Health.
- Submit each result once and wait for the saved notice. Create Recovery Point Now before a correction.
- At Ready to Complete, choose Complete Tournament. Export Full Event Backup and final reports, then Shutdown Tournament Server.
Print the Operator quick referenceOperator quick reference (OPERATOR_QUICK_REFERENCE.pdf) for separate Director, scorer, and recovery pages. Detailed instructions and labeled screenshots follow.
Before doors open
- Put the Director laptop on power and disable sleep.
- Use a reliable private router or Windows Mobile Hotspot. The signed installer limits inbound access to the same local subnet on TCP ports 8765-8774, even when Windows labels the venue network Public. Never approve a broad Any-port Windows Firewall exception.
- Start MatCommand and keep exactly one controlling Director tab.
- Confirm the active license in Info / License Center. Raw online and offline IDs are under Advanced device identifiers. Demo Tournament needs no license but is fixed and Not Official.
- Have the final roster, format, divisions, classes, mat count, and scoring plan ready.
- Mark every mat Paper Scoring or Digital Scoring. Paper needs no scorer; every Digital mat needs its matching scorer connected.
- Test printers, scorer links, viewer, Parent Portal, bracket view, and mat display.
Safe start rule
Do not begin until Tournament Check has run, every Must fix item is resolved, every Review before starting warning is reviewed, public access is explicitly chosen, and every Digital scorer is connected to its exact mat.
Paper-only, Digital-only, and mixed-by-mat operation are supported. Cloud or Internet failure never blocks local scoring.
Run Guided Setup
For a new event choose the far-left New / Reset Tournament, then choose Keep Roster and Rebuild or Start Completely Empty. To resume, open the intended previous tournament instead. Enter the name and date, choose 1 through 18 mats, and mark each mat Paper or Digital. For a Scramble split mat, set Oldest Age and optionally Heaviest (lb) under Mat Scoring and Assignment. Example: Mat 3, 8U and 75 lb maximum; leave a full mat available for older/heavier bouts. Both wrestlers must fit for automatic placement. Director placement can override after a warning, so this is not a physical-safety lock. Save Event Information saves every visible mat setting.
For Grapevine, choose Scramble. Grapevine League is already selected. Choose a required Girls / Boys pairing rule, including explicit No preference when appropriate, then Save Format and Rules. Ordinary Scramble uses event-rule defaults and does not ask the USA Wrestling medical question. The organizer remains responsible for medical coverage. For brackets, choose the governing Rules Authority; the USA Wrestling medical answer configures injury-clock behavior only. For a Hybrid event, set only the intended classes to Double Elimination or Round Robin and leave the rest on Use Tournament Default.
Import CSV or XLSX, or enter wrestlers manually on the left. Keep the loaded roster visible on the right while verifying names, weights, divisions, teams, ratings, and assigned classes.
Choose Review and Build Tournament from roster review. In Grapevine Preflight, approve or deny each proposed out-of-guideline pairing. Approve All Proposed requires coach and referee confirmations and a second confirmation. Undecided and denied proposals are skipped. Choose Build Matches; MatCommand rechecks each approved pairing before adding it. For brackets, review optional seeds and small-class format recommendations before building.
After the first successful build, this stage opens and runs the read-only Tournament Check automatically. If no bouts were built, Build Tournament stays open for roster or pairing changes. Resolve Must fix items and review Review before starting warnings. The left-aligned Publish Online and Continue Locally choices stay gold until selected; the selected choice turns green. Choose Start Tournament & Open Live Control. Use Device Links for mats selected as Digital. Click a QR code or choose Enlarge QR to show one large code for the selected device.
If another Cloud event is using the license: this tournament remains local. Choose the gold End Previous Event & Publish This One only when the previous public event may end. Confirm when MatCommand asks. The previous event's saved local tournament data is not deleted. Or choose Continue Locally and publish later.
Division editor: Choose the gold Use This Configuration beside Close to apply your checked divisions. The same action remains at the bottom. More Options: review every division and weight stays open during background updates. USA Wrestling also offers an unchecked 6U - Local Event Rules option with editable 35, 40, 45, 50 and 55 lb starter classes and three 1-minute periods. It is a local-event choice, not a national USA Wrestling 6U standard. Verify event eligibility and rules before applying it.
Match Rules: Grapevine fills the MatCommand event-rule fallback automatically; Grapevine pairing is not itself an official rulebook. The Director can change the authority when written event rules require it. USA Wrestling uses the selected style and age profile. NFHS Folkstyle identifies school rules. Other / Event Rules uses MatCommand fallback values, including 5:00 blood and 1:30 injury where no value is entered. Check every timer and scoring rule against the event's written rules.
Override fields: Blood and Injury are accumulated per-wrestler allowances; entering an Injury limit changes medical-staff elapsed tracking to a countdown. Freestyle activity time is the passive-wrestler clock and does not apply to Folkstyle or Greco-Roman. Period 1 and 2 are match-clock lengths and must be entered together. Rest is the break between periods. Technical superiority margin is the lead that ends a Freestyle or Greco-Roman match. Enter only a published change and its authority or reason; a blank field does not certify local rules.
Scramble options: Grapevine League is selected by default. Choose the Girls / Boys pairing rule before saving. MatCommand Default and Grapevine League are protected presets. Custom reveals the extra pairing and period controls; saved Custom formats can be applied later. Seeds and multi-division controls do not appear for Scramble.
Tournament Maintenance is for uncommon rebuild, recovery, or administrative work. It opens directly below the stage controls so its actions and result are visible.
Scramble and Grapevine Girls / Boys pairing: Set Gender for every wrestler when using a pairing preference. Girls with girls first, then coed if needed prefers same-group opponents but allows a safe coed fallback. Girls with girls; boys with boys only prevents automatic cross-group pairings. Choose No preference explicitly if the event does not use a gender preference. Blank Gender can prevent a wrestler from being matched under a group rule. Grapevine age, weight, rating, and availability protections still apply.
USA Wrestling rules and medical timers
For USA Wrestling Freestyle and Greco-Roman, verify the saved age division before build. Standard profiles use two 2:00 periods for 8U through 16U, U15, U17, and Masters; USA Junior, U20, U23, and Senior use two 3:00 periods. Standard rest is 0:30. Freestyle adds the age-specific 0:30 activity workflow.
Blood time accumulates separately for Red and Green to 4:00, and cleanup does not consume the allowance. Qualified-event injury time is an elapsed tracker controlled by medical staff and the referee. Without appointed event medical staff, the verified fallback is 2:00 injury and 4:00 blood. MatCommand records these events but never decides whether a wrestler may continue.
When the referee ends the medical stoppage, choose Stop on the active Blood or Injury timer, then Start Clock. Start Clock is blocked while a medical timer is running. Confirm the score, period, and main clock before wrestling resumes.
The main match clock stays centered between Red and Green on wide scoring screens and moves above both wrestlers on narrow devices. Start Clock and Stop Clock are directly below the main timer. Clock corrections and period controls remain above. Blood and Injury begin as four compact corner buttons. Choose one to reveal its accumulated timer. Stopping it keeps the recorded time visible and changes the action to Resume. Undoing the timer back to zero hides that unused counter again.
Mat Display clock and period
The Mat Display shows the timer and an explicit Period 1, Period 2, or Overtime label in a large, high-contrast center panel between Red and Green. During a configured rest, the timer shows rest time and the label identifies the next period. At zero, it shows Ready for Period 2 (or the next period). Long wrestler names wrap inside their panels instead of clipping. On screens 600 pixels wide or narrower, the clock panel moves above both wrestlers. The display follows the scoring station; it does not start, stop, or change the match.
Hybrid format check
Before build, verify each class shows Double Elimination or Round Robin as intended. A Double Elimination class with 2 through 4 wrestlers asks you to choose Use Round Robin or Keep Double Elimination. After build, DE and RR bouts share one numbered queue and the same mats. Round Robin groups show standings; Double Elimination groups show brackets and placements. Autosave, restart recovery, reopened tournaments, and Full Event Backups retain each class format.
Normal bout workflow
- Every configured mat, from 1 through 18, stays in the primary Live Mats grid. Open Director Controls below the full grid only when needed. Each nested action shows Open or Close with a direction arrow.
- The Director may place any ready bout on a safe mat as Now Wrestling, On Deck, In the Hole, Coming Up, or End of Queue. Queue-only positions remain available on a paused mat; resume that mat before choosing Now Wrestling. A mat assigned by the Director stays fixed through Pause and Resume unless the Director moves the bout.
- In Scramble, Add Scramble Bout appends the new bout to End of Queue on the selected mat, including after ready bouts under Later on This Mat. You can add it while a wrestler is competing; it will wait until both wrestlers are available. Use Place Bout to change its position. After you explicitly choose Complete Tournament, Add Scramble Bout asks Reopen tournament to add this bout? Cancel changes nothing. Confirm reopens the tournament, adds the bout, and saves both changes together.
- Digital scorers verify mat, bout, wrestlers, and corners; run the bout; then submit the result once. Period and match controls are neutral or gold, separate from the Red wrestler's scoring controls.
- At a Digital scoring table, Undo reverses the last recorded reversible scorer action. Undoing a score or penalty reverses the action without stopping a running main bout clock. Undoing a clock, period, or match action intentionally restores that action's clock state. Undoing a medical or activity-clock action restores the applicable timer state. If Undo restores a running medical timer, the main clock stops at its current time. Reset Period Clock cannot be undone. Confirm the displayed score, period, and every running timer before continuing.
- For Paper, the printed sheet leaves corners unassigned. The referee marks one wrestler Red and the other Green before scoring. Start the bout. When the sheet returns, choose B# Enter result and click the winning wrestler; the name turns gold. Add result details (optional) lets you choose how they won and enter final scores by wrestler name. The Director does not have to know the referee's corner assignment. Pin / Fall, Injury Default, and Disqualification need no scores. Fall time is optional: 215 becomes 2:15; blank stays unrecorded. For other outcomes, enter both scores or neither; Decision scores must agree with the winner. Choose B# Submit result and wait for the saved notice.
- Wait for MatCommand to save the result and advance the queue.
Paper result entry uses named wrestlers, not an assumed mat color. Digital corner swaps preserve bracket ownership.
Director during the event
Open Event Health above Live Mats to inspect save status, scorer connections, pending results, and recovery status. Leave it open while working if useful. Follow the reported action for the affected mat or bout.
- Watch Now Wrestling, On Deck, In the Hole, Coming Up, scoring method, scorer status, and blocked-bout explanations. If automatic staging is paused, the Public Display and Parent Portal still show the authoritative live Digital bout. The bracket board reports Live, Reconnecting, Offline, or Saved Copy.
- Choose Create Recovery Point Now before finals, corrections, or risky changes.
- Use Re-push only for the verified current Digital bout. Paper mats use B# Enter result.
- Pause New Bouts stops automatic staging across the event while active bouts may finish.
- For a single-mat injury or equipment delay, open Director Controls > Mat Flow, select the mat, and choose Pause New Bouts on Mat #. The held mat stays visible. Its current bout can finish, and queued bouts may be placed, reordered, or moved off, but MatCommand must not stage or start that mat's successor until resumed. Other mats continue.
If something goes wrong
Scorer disconnects
Reconnect to the tournament network and reopen the same mat URL. If the current bout does not return, verify it in Live Control and choose Push to Scorer once. If the bout is still On Deck, choose the gold Start B# action first and confirm that the mat changes to Now Wrestling. Then choose B# Enter Result, verify the names, click the winner, optionally add details, and submit the referee's result. The mat stays in Digital scoring mode. Resume a specifically paused mat before starting another bout, and resolve any pending result first.
A wrestler does not show
On the scorer, choose the absent wrestler's No Show button. The opposite wrestler and Forfeit / DNS are selected automatically. Check the winner's name before submitting.
A result is pending
Do not force a bout and do not enter the result a second way. Reconnect the scorer or restart MatCommand if necessary. The stored pending result and canonical recovery flow determine whether it must retry or has already committed.
A wrong result was submitted
Create Recovery Point Now before changing a saved result. Use Undo Last Result for the most recent protected result, or Correct Result for an older bout. Read the affected bouts in the confirmation. MatCommand clears the selected result and the later bouts that depend on it; unrelated bouts and results stay unchanged. Type REPAIR only when requested. Enter the correct result, then verify the bracket, queue, standings, and affected completed bouts before continuing.
A bout is blocked
Read the reason. Complete or correct the feeder bout, rest conflict, active assignment, or pending result that owns the wrestler. Do not force a bout with guessed participants.
Director or server restarts
Close duplicate Director tabs and start MatCommand again. A started, unfinished tournament restores automatically. Setup-only and completed events stay on the launch page until you choose Open Previous Tournament. Confirm revision and tournament identity, then verify every mat assignment and pending result before scoring resumes.
Finish and archive
- Confirm every required bout is complete and no mat has active, queued, ready, or pending work.
- When Tournament Status shows Ready to Complete, choose the final gold Complete Tournament button and confirm the closeout.
- Save and choose Create Recovery Point Now.
- For parents, open Print > Team Wall Schedule, choose a team, and select Print Wall Schedule. Reprint after moving bouts. Use Detailed Coach Sheet when opponent and result detail is needed.
- Print or export final brackets, results, standings, awards, team reports, mat reports, and audit records.
- Choose Export Full Event Backup and retain the ZIP.
- End the correct Cloud event if it was published.
- To run another event, choose New Tournament, then Save Results and Start New Tournament. MatCommand saves a full backup before opening Event Setup. Keep Roster for Next Tournament is optional. Finished events need no separate Reset or typed RESET; unfinished events retain those safeguards. If backup fails, nothing is cleared.
- Choose Shutdown Tournament Server. Closing the browser alone may not stop it.
Print the team wall schedule
Choose Print > Team Wall Schedule, select the team and All bouts, then choose Print Wall Schedule. Each wrestler has a compact list of bout numbers and mats. The light print layout normally fits a team on one or two pages; unusually large teams continue onto additional pages so no wrestler is omitted. The printed assignment is a snapshot, so reprint after a bout moves.
Give a coach the right wrestler record
- For live, current-event information, open the Parent Portal and search the wrestler's name. It shows that event's status, win-loss record, and completed bouts. It is not a season-history account.
- For a team handout, the Director opens Tools/Admin, chooses Export One Team's Records, selects the team, and shares only that team's CSV. It contains current-event records and omits birth dates, ratings, and permanent athlete IDs.
- For records across saved tournaments, the Director opens Tools, then Setup & Device Links, then Open Wrestler History and searches the athlete. Keep the reusable roster's permanent Wrestler UUID when importing the athlete into a later event. Coaches do not have a direct cross-event history login in V14.43.
High School Head and Neck Evaluation
In the actual High School (NFHS) program using NFHS Folkstyle, choose Head/Neck (HNC) beside the affected wrestler. Start only on the referee's instruction and confirm that an on-site physician or certified athletic trainer is evaluating the wrestler. Each wrestler has one evaluation of up to 5:00 per bout, including overtime. Ending early uses that incident; a second occurrence warns that NFHS requires default and provides no new allowance. The main clock stays stopped until the referee signals a restart. At expiry, await the referee's decision and use the normal confirmed result workflow. HNC does not change ordinary injury, blood, or recovery allowances. Correct mistaken entries explicitly with a reason; ordinary Undo and Reset do not replenish genuine HNC use. Medical details remain on the operator side.
Completed Bout Scoring Reports
Use Print Completed Bouts for coach review, or print one completed bout. The report shows the wrestlers, final result, and recorded scoring sequence with points and running scores. Corrections and undone scoring remain identifiable. A paper bout or older save without point-by-point history is labeled accordingly; MatCommand does not invent missing points. Medical details and private athlete identifiers are excluded.
Current V14.43 boundaries
V14.25 fixed New / Reset Tournament persistence. A confirmed reset is saved before success is shown and remains empty after browser refresh or application restart. Format and Rules must be confirmed again. Start Completely Empty and the maintenance Reset Tournament clear the roster; only the explicit Keep Roster option retains athletes.
- Freestyle and Greco-Roman require an explicit supported USA Wrestling age division. Unknown international divisions are blocked instead of receiving guessed timing. Revalidate the official rules before a later rules season.
- Automatic Madison grouping is not enabled in standard Round Robin or bracket engines.
- Demo Tournament is fixed, local-only, and Not Official. The sample NFHS Folkstyle preset is supplied automatically, with one-minute demo periods; no rules selection is needed.
- An already authorized and started local event continues through Internet, Cloud, or licensing-service interruption.
- Wrestler History is private and Director-only. Local SQLite remains the operational history source; MatCommand creates no public athlete profile or public history search.
- Private progress synchronization runs after local projection. Network, authentication, licensing-validation, Worker, conflict, or remote-storage failure remains pending for retry and never blocks scoring, saves, recovery, or local history review.
- Private progress Cloud synchronization is not yet accepted for production use. It requires separate verification of the live Wrestler Progress service and organization access controls. This revision does not approve that service. Local tournament operation and local Wrestler History do not depend on it.
- Names, teams, divisions, weights, birth dates, and ratings are not automatic identity-merge keys. MatCommand also makes no automatic Grapevine rating recommendation or change.
- Per-mat Paper/Digital choices, launch update prompts, High School NFHS Head/Neck evaluation, and completed-bout reports remain available.
Installing an update
Save the tournament and export a Full Event Backup before updating. V14.15 and later permit an update from a freshly cleared Setup screen even when an older recovery file says a prior event was started. The updater still blocks while the current Director has a live, unpaused tournament or any mat is live or waiting for a result to save.
Update verification requires the exact SHA-256, a valid Authenticode signature, and Scott Crum as publisher. The installer closes only Tournament processes owned by that installation. After installation, launch MatCommand normally, confirm the expected revision and build in Director Info, and verify the intended saved event before scoring.
At an idle local Director launch, Tournament checks the official update service and offers Update now or Later when a newer version is available. Offline launch remains usable. Existing events must save before installation; an empty setup does not need an event save. Updates remain blocked during active bouts and unpaused tournaments. V14.18 users whose updater rejects a valid signed installer must install the latest signed download from https://www.matcommandhq.com/downloads over the existing app after saving and exporting a Full Event Backup. Do not uninstall or bypass signature warnings.
Director walkthrough
Screenshots show the current V14.43 interface with fictional event data in an isolated packaged application. Check the actual event name, roster, mat plan and connections before competition.
More current setup screens
Current interface examples use fictional athletes. A screenshot does not verify a venue connection.
For an offline Digital scorer outage, start the exact On Deck bout from Director Live Control before declaring its result. Green No Show means Red wins, and Red No Show means Green wins. For a Paper bout, select the winner, optionally record the method and wrestler-named scores, then submit. Mat colors are only needed on the referee's sheet for live scoring. Pin / Fall, Injury Default, and Disqualification do not require scores. A winner-only result advances the bout but cannot invent missing scoring history.
Roster review and safe mat assignments
Import review: If a bracket or Round Robin file uses division names that are not configured, Match roster divisions opens. Choose the intended configured division for every group and review weight-class changes. Nothing imports until the review checkbox and Import Reviewed Roster are confirmed. Cancel Import imports none of the file. Actual weights, names, records, known IDs and supplied ratings are preserved.
BirthDate and Age: BirthDate uses YYYY-MM-DD; Age is a fallback. These fields do not verify a birth certificate or automatically repair a conflicting division. Check the event's age rules and cutoff. Bantam and Junior are not universal aliases across every organization's presets.
Scramble mat limits: Both wrestlers must fit a mat's age-division and actual-weight limits, including later queued bouts. A restricted half mat never receives an automatic out-of-range bout. Eligible small wrestlers may also use an unrestricted mat. If no mat fits, review the unassigned bout or mat plan. An explicit Director MAT LIMIT OVERRIDE is required for an exception.
Bracket and Round Robin assignments: Optionally assign a whole division or a specific division/weight class before build. Specific class assignments take priority. Assigned mats are reserved; Automatic groups use unreserved mats. If no automatic mat remains, assign the remaining group or free a mat before building. Live moves outside the plan require an explicit MAT GROUP OVERRIDE.
Scratch and recovery: A Scramble scratch cancels unstarted future bouts without awarding forfeits, preserves completed results and lists affected opponents in Director Activity. Review a replacement hand bout deliberately. Undo This Scratch is limited to ten minutes in the same unfinished build and only while affected bout, athlete, result, reservation and mat-rule state remains unchanged. Bracket scratch preserves completed results and progression, with recorded future forfeit wins where needed. Resolve active or scorer-held bouts first.
