Set up Mixed Gender Rotating Partners
Mixed Gender Rotating Partners runs exactly like Round Robin (Rotating Partners), with one added rule: each round pairs one male player with one female player. Players still register as individuals and still change partners every round.
Everything else—generation, courts, scoring, groups, standings—works the same way. See the Rotating Partner Round Robin walkthrough for the full lifecycle.
Set it up
Create the event as normal, from CourtReserve or directly in Good Game Sports.
Set Format to Mixed Gender Rotating Partners.
Set Division Type to Doubles.
Set the division Gender to Mixed.
Add players, then check every player has a gender before you generate.
Every player needs a gender
Pairing is driven entirely by each player's gender, so a player without one cannot be placed into a mixed pair.
Gender comes from the player's Good Game Sports profile when they have an account. When you add players yourself, it comes from what you enter—a spreadsheet import reads it from the Gender column.
Before generating, open the Players tab and confirm nobody is missing one. A player whose gender is blank, or set to anything other than male or female, is not eligible for a mixed pair and will be paired as a leftover instead.
[!WARNING] Fix genders before you generate. Correcting a profile afterwards does not repair a schedule that was already built—you have to regenerate.
Balance your roster
This is the part that surprises hosts. The app will always prefer a mixed pair, but it cannot invent players. When your male and female counts do not match, the extras are paired with each other.
With 16 players and 4 courts:
Roster | Teams each round | Result |
|---|---|---|
8 men + 8 women | 8 | Every team is mixed |
9 men + 7 women | 8 | 7 mixed, 1 all-male |
10 men + 6 women | 8 | 6 mixed, 2 all-male |
The rule is simple: you get as many mixed pairs as you have players of the smaller gender, and whoever is left over is paired within their own gender. Equal counts are the only way to guarantee every team is mixed.
If your counts are uneven, you have three options:
Recruit to even the numbers.
Accept the same-gender pairs—the app spreads them around rather than trapping the same people together every round.
Move the surplus players to Excluded so they sit out, then rotate who sits between rounds.
What changes during generation
Two behaviors differ from standard rotating partners.
Byes are split across genders. When a round has two or more byes, the app balances them between male and female players rather than sitting several of one gender at once. This keeps the remaining pool balanced so the next round can still pair everyone.
Partners repeat sooner. This is expected and not a scheduling fault. In a standard 16-player rotating partner event there are 120 possible partnerships. In a mixed event with 8 men and 8 women only 64 of those pairings are legal, because same-gender pairs are off the table. A smaller pool means the schedule cycles back to a repeat partner earlier. If you want more variety, run more players rather than more rounds.
The app treats the mixed-gender rule as more important than partner freshness. Given a choice between repeating a mixed pair and creating a brand-new same-gender pair, it repeats the mixed pair.
If pairings come out wrong
Same-gender pairs appearing in a roster you believe is balanced almost always means a gender is missing or wrong on a profile.
Open the Players tab and check the affected players.
Correct the gender on the player's profile.
Regenerate the affected rounds — see Edit player groups and regenerate in Rotating Partner Round Robin.
If the roster genuinely is uneven, the same-gender pairs are correct behavior and regenerating will not remove them.