How to score a tournament in sets

Take a match that finishes 25-23, 10-25, 25-23. The first team wins two sets to one, so they win the match and move on. Add the points up though and they scored 60 against 71.

Sets decide it. Totals never do. That one sentence is the whole difference, and it is why a volleyball bracket cannot simply be scored like a baseball one.

When you build a bracket, under the format, there is How a game is scored. Change it from one score per game to sets, and a Best of choice appears: 3, 5 or 7.

If the tournament is already saved to your account, the same setting is on its Settings tab, under "How a game is scored."

The score box shows one row per set in your format, numbered down the side, with the two teams named above them. Type each set as you have it on the scoresheet.

Leave unplayed sets blank. A best of five that finished in three straight sets means filling three rows and ignoring the other two. There is no need to say how many sets were played, because that is what the rows you filled in already say.

A row wants both numbers or neither. One number on its own is a half typed set rather than a result, so it is refused by set number and you can go back and finish it.

• A tied set is refused. Somebody has to win a set.
• A match that comes out level is refused, two sets each in a best of four rows, for the same reason an elimination game cannot be a draw.
• More sets than the format allows is refused. Six rows in a best of five is a typo somewhere.
• A match that ended early is allowed. Two sets to nothing in a best of five is not a mistake, it is a forfeit or an injury, and it is a real thing you have to be able to record.

On the bracket, the number beside each team is sets won, because that is the result. A 3 against a 1 means three sets to one. The sets themselves are printed underneath the two teams, so the card reads 3 - 1 with 25-20, 22-25, 25-19, 25-23 below it.

The public page carries both in the same way, in its latest results and in the full schedule, and so do the PDF, Word and Excel downloads. A printed sheet is the one place nobody can tap through to find out what the sets were, so the exports spell it out as 2 - 1 followed by the set scores in brackets.

Anything decided by sets rather than by a running total. Volleyball is the common one in youth sports, and tennis works the same way.

It is not for sports that are played in quarters, periods or innings. Those are a breakdown of one score, not several scores, and the winner is whoever has the higher total, so one score per game is the right setting and the only one available for them.