Hockey tournament software and live scoring

Field hockey is played 11-a-side, and most senior matches today are played over four quarters, with a short break between quarters and a longer one at half-time. Junior, school and indoor events often use shorter quarters, halves or smaller teams, so Zeetius treats the match length, the number of periods and the team size as settings of each competition rather than a fixed rule.

Hockey tournaments commonly start with pools, where every team plays every other team in its group. The leading teams then meet in crossover matches, where the winner of one pool plays the runner-up of another, before semi-finals and a final. Many events also play classification matches so that every team finishes with a final position. Zeetius Tournaments runs knockouts, round robins, leagues and team events, which covers these shapes.

When a knockout match is level at full time, many competitions settle it with a shoot-out rather than extra time. Whether a drawn match goes to a shoot-out, and how pool tables are ranked, depends on the competition's rules, so we set each event up with the organiser to match them.

• Pool play. Round-robin groups that decide the seeding for the next stage.
• Crossovers and classification. Matches that pair teams across pools and decide every finishing position.
• Knockouts and finals. Quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final, with shoot-outs where the rules call for them.

Hockey is played on artificial turf, and most venues have only one or two pitches, so the pitch is the tightest resource in any hockey tournament. A pool stage with many teams has to fit into fixed time slots, with enough rest between matches for each team and time for the pitch to be watered where the surface needs it. Zeetius Tournaments generates the fixtures and the schedule automatically and lets the organiser adjust it during the day.

Crossover and classification matches cannot be scheduled with names until the pools finish, so the schedule holds slots such as winner of Pool A against runner-up of Pool B, which fill in as results come in. Keeping every pitch on one schedule shows the organiser when a match has run long and what that means for the next slot.

Umpires are nominated and allocated to every match through technical official management, so each game has its pair of umpires and nobody is booked for two matches at the same time. When the pool stage runs on a single turf from morning to evening, the organiser can also share the umpiring load fairly across the day and keep fresh umpires for the crossovers and finals.

A hockey association affiliates clubs and schools, registers players each season, appoints umpires and technical officials, and sanctions the competitions played under its name. Zeetius Federation brings these together, with separate workspaces for national, state, district and club tiers, so each level manages its own members while the association sees every club and every championship.

Rankings and certificates are prepared from real results, and every player at a school or junior championship can receive a certificate generated straight from the results. Membership fees and entries are paid online, and automatic email and SMS messages tell clubs about renewals, fixtures and results without anyone sending them by hand.

The association's public website, membership cards and certificates can carry its own name and branding, and Zet AI lets the office ask about its own membership and participation data in plain language rather than building a new spreadsheet each time.