| Course | MT242 Managing Sport Programs |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 3 |
| Paper type | Scheduling exercise |
| Length | About 1,200 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MT242 Unit 3
Twenty-Four Games and Twenty-Five Slots: A Unit 3 Scheduling Exercise for One Youth League's Winter
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MT242: Managing Sport Programs
Unit 3 Scheduling Exercise
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Linden Valley Youth Basketball, its teams, gyms, coaches and referee availability are composite and illustrative; the script is a sample written for this exercise; the sources cited are real.
The Constraints
Linden Valley Youth Basketball plays six divisions of eight teams, one for each sex in each of three two-grade bands. Each team plays one game every Saturday. The regular season is seven rounds, so each team plays every other team in its division once, and three later Saturdays hold playoffs and a reserve date.
The gyms set hard limits. The elementary school gym hosts grades 3-4 only, because its court is about twenty feet shorter than a regulation middle school court and too tight for older players' full games, and between its 8 a.m. opening and its 5 p.m. closing it offers nine one-hour slots. The middle school gym and the church gym split grades 5-8 and offer eight slots each. That is 25 slots for 24 games: the 8 grade 3-4 games in nine elementary slots, and 16 grade 5-8 games in sixteen slots across two gyms.
Four further rules shape the schedule. A coach who leads two teams cannot be scheduled in two places in the same hour; this season, five coaches lead two teams. No team should play at 8 a.m. more than twice in seven rounds, because families complain about early starts and attendance drops. Referees work in pairs, so the number of games in any one hour cannot exceed half the referees available that hour. And the elementary gym must be cleared by 5 p.m.
Building the Rounds
The script pairs teams within each division by the circle method, a standard way of building a round-robin schedule. One team is fixed in place and the other seven rotate one position each round, so after seven rounds every team has met every other team once. Rasmussen and Trick (2008) describe this construction and its variants in their survey of round-robin scheduling. With eight teams, each round has four games, so six divisions produce 24 games a Saturday and 168 regular-season games in all.
Assigning Games to Slots
The second pass assigns each Saturday's 24 games to the 25 slots. The script places grades 3-4 games at the elementary gym and splits the grades 5-8 divisions between the other two gyms, alternating each week so that no division plays every game in the church gym, which is the smallest and the farthest from most families.
For each Saturday, the script shuffles the games, places them in slots and then tests the result. If a two-team coach appears twice in one hour, or a team would exceed two 8 a.m. games across the season, it discards the attempt and tries again. Kendall et al. (2010), reviewing sports scheduling methods, note that simple repeated assignment with checks often works well for small leagues, where the number of possible schedules is large but the constraints are few. In this case the script found a valid schedule for all seven Saturdays within a few hundred attempts each.
A Sample Saturday
The grid for Round 3 shows the pattern. At the elementary gym, the eight grades 3-4 games fill every hour through the 3 p.m. tipoff, and the 4 p.m. slot stays open. At the middle school, eight games start on the hour beginning at 8 a.m. for grades 5-6 girls, 7-8 boys and part of 5-6 boys. The church gym opens an hour later and its last of eight games tips off at 4 p.m. The open elementary slot at 4 p.m. is the league's one spare hour that Saturday, and it moves to a different gym and time each round.
One empty hour a week is the whole margin between a schedule that bends and one that breaks.
The Check Report
After building the season, the script prints a check report. It confirms zero coach conflicts across all seven rounds. It shows that 41 of 48 teams play exactly one 8 a.m. game, seven play two and none play three. It counts games in each hour across the three gyms: the peak is three games, which requires six referees, against typical Saturday availability of thirteen of the eighteen referees on the assignor's list. Referee demand is therefore not the binding constraint; gym slots are.
Playoff Saturdays
The three Saturdays after the regular season use the same slots differently. The first two hold playoffs: the top four teams in each division play semifinals on Saturday eight and finals on Saturday nine, while the other four teams in each division play consolation games, so every team plays all ten weeks. That is 24 games on Saturday eight and 24 on Saturday nine, or 48 in all, which brings the season to the 216 games families are promised. The tenth Saturday is held empty as the reserve date. If it is not needed, the league uses it for an all-star clinic and a skills competition, which need only two gyms and no referees.
Fairness Across Divisions
A schedule can meet every rule and still feel unfair if one division always plays in the church gym or always draws the last slot of the day. The script therefore reports, for each division, how many games it plays in each gym and in each time block. In the final schedule, every grades 5-8 division plays between three and four of its seven games in the church gym, and no division plays more than two games after 3 p.m.
Slack and What Happens When a Gym Is Lost
The schedule has one spare slot each Saturday and one reserve Saturday after the regular season. That is enough to absorb one or two postponed games a week, but not the loss of a whole gym. If the church gym closes on a Saturday, eight games lose their slots and only one spare slot exists. Those games must move to the reserve Saturday or to a new date.
Masteralexis et al. (2019) note that event schedules should include planned reserve time in proportion to the risk of disruption. For a winter league in a snow region, with gyms owned by other organizations, one reserve Saturday is the minimum. The coordinator should also ask the district whether a Sunday slot could be permitted on short notice, which would give the league a second fallback without lengthening the season.
Appendix: The Script
The script is about sixty lines of Python and runs in four parts. First, it reads a short file listing divisions, teams, coaches and gyms. Second, it builds the seven rounds for each division using the circle method. Third, for each Saturday, it assigns games to slots at random within the gym rules and retries until the coach and early-slot rules are met. Fourth, it writes the grid for each Saturday to a spreadsheet and prints the check report. The coordinator can rerun it in a few seconds if a team withdraws or a coach takes on a second team.
References
Kendall, G., Knust, S., Ribeiro, C. C., & Urrutia, S. (2010). Scheduling in sports: An annotated bibliography. Computers & Operations Research, 37(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2009.05.013
Masteralexis, L. P., Barr, C. A., & Hums, M. A. (2019). Principles and practice of sport management (6th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Rasmussen, R. V., & Trick, M. A. (2008). Round robin scheduling: A survey. European Journal of Operational Research, 188(3), 617-636. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2007.05.046
MT242 Unit 3 instructions, in plain terms
The third unit asks students to build a season schedule for a program under real constraints and show that it works. State the teams, divisions, facilities and time slots, then separate hard limits, such as gym hours and coaches with two teams, from fairness goals, such as spreading early games. The prompt expects a method for building rounds, often a round-robin, and a check showing the schedule meets every rule. Some sections require code or spreadsheet logic in an appendix; others accept a clearly described manual method. Include a sample week's grid and say how much slack the schedule holds and what happens if a facility is lost. Four pages in APA 7 is common, with sources on scheduling or event management.
Inside the MT242 Unit 3 example
The exercise opens with six divisions, three gyms and the arithmetic of 25 slots for 24 games, followed by the four rules, and a margin note explains why hard limits and fairness goals are treated differently. The circle method is described with Rasmussen and Trick cited. A slot-assignment section explains the shuffle-and-check approach with Kendall and colleagues. A sample Saturday grid shows the single open hour, marked by the highlighted line. The check report confirms zero coach conflicts and the 8 a.m. counts, with a note that referees are not the binding limit. Sections on playoff Saturdays and fairness across divisions follow, then slack and the loss of a gym, and an appendix describes the script in four parts.
Where the points sit in the MT242 Unit 3 rubric
Scheduling exercises earn their marks for a valid schedule, a sound method, a check and an honest account of slack. A schedule that breaks a hard rule loses heavily, so a check report that tests every rule is worth including even when not required. Graders reward a stated method, such as the circle method, rather than a grid that appears without explanation. Fairness across teams, early slots and facilities shows judgment beyond the minimum. A section on what the schedule cannot absorb, such as losing a gym, earns credit for realism. A clear sample grid and a readable appendix finish the paper, and Rasmussen and Trick or a similar source should be cited where the method is introduced.
MT242 Unit 3 help from the desk
Students often present a finished grid with no method or check, which leaves the grader unable to verify it. Another frequent problem is ignoring coaches or officials who serve more than one team. Some schedules meet every rule but leave no slack, or claim slack without counting it. Others give every early game to the same divisions. Make sure your game count matches the number of teams and rounds. If your league's facilities are different, send the teams, gyms and hours, and a writer can build the rounds and the check report from your own constraints.
Get an MT242 Unit 3 example written to your instructions
Send the teams, facilities and time windows your Unit 3 exercise sets, and any rules the prompt adds about officials, travel or rest days. Include the rubric and the tool it expects. A first custom schedule, free and back in 24-48h, arrives with its constraints written out, a check report and the slack it leaves. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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MT242 Unit 3 questions, answered
What is the circle method for round-robin scheduling?
A standard way to pair teams so that each meets every other exactly once. With an even number of teams, one team stays fixed and the rest rotate one position each round around it, like seats around a table. Eight teams produce seven rounds of four games. With an odd number, a placeholder team is added and whoever draws it has a bye that round.
Does a scheduling exercise need code?
Not always. Some MT242 sections accept a spreadsheet or a hand-built grid, while others ask for a script or scheduling software. What every version needs is the constraints written as checkable rules and evidence that the schedule meets them. The example uses about sixty lines of Python because a script can test every rule on every Saturday in seconds.
How much slack should a season schedule hold?
Enough to absorb the disruptions the program can reasonably expect. For a winter league that borrows school gyms, that usually means at least one reserve date for weather and some unused hours for single postponed games. Outdoor spring programs often need more. The example keeps one empty Saturday and one open hour a week, and explains what each can cover.
Where can I find a free MT242 Unit 3 sample paper?
The whole MT242 Unit 3 scheduling exercise is printed here. It builds a seven-round season for 48 youth basketball teams with the circle method, assigns games to 25 Saturday slots and reports every check.
How much slack does the MT242 Unit 3 schedule hold?
One empty slot each Saturday and one reserve Saturday after the playoffs. That absorbs a postponed game or two, but not the loss of a gym, which would displace eight games at once.