Overview

I built a tournament management platform for a recreational dodgeball league using Cursor AI — a player-facing web interface and an operator desktop app, both running live at a real tournament within three weeks of starting the build.

The existing system was a Google Sheet divided by court. To find their schedule, each team Ctrl+F’d their name, manually collected every row it appeared in across multiple columns, and made their own static copy. Once the tournament started, there was no live reference for current round, time remaining, or bracket status. Announcements were verbal. If anything changed, every self-made schedule went stale instantly.

The player-facing side lives at ggdt.trny.com. Teams select their name from a dropdown and see a complete live schedule: upcoming games, court assignments, countdowns, and bracket position, updating in real time as the tournament progresses. The operator desktop app, built in Electron, ran the full day — triggering timed round robin progression automatically, firing synchronized audio cues across all active courts from a single action, accepting score entry from collected score sheets, calculating standings, and advancing the double elimination bracket as results came in. Audio announcements used a custom ElevenLabs voice with original sound effects.

26 teams, approximately 260 participants, zero failures. Multiple experienced attendees called it the best-run tournament they’d ever been to.

Impact

• Schedule lookup eliminated — players selected a team name and saw their full schedule instantly
• Audio cues synchronized across all concurrent courts from a single operator trigger
• Bracket advanced automatically in real time as scores were entered
• Zero operational failures across both tournament phases
• Participant feedback: “best run most organized tournament I have ever been to”

Tools Used

Node.js · Express · Vanilla JavaScript · Electron · Google Sheets API · ElevenLabs · Cursor AI · Render.com

TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION

For a full breakdown of the system architecture, tools, and implementation: