League setup from scratch

A fresh Piranha instance starts empty: no leagues, no teams, no templates. This page is the order of operations to get from there to a season of meets. Each step links to the page with the details.

0. First admin

Install the app and create the first site-admin account with the CLI — see Install & first run.

1. Create the league

Admin → Leagues → Add league. Give it a name and abbreviation, and pick a starting rulebook: OMPA, USA Swimming age-group, NCAA, USMS, NFHS — or blank. The chosen rulebook is copied into your league, so editing it never affects anyone else.

2. Review the rulebook

Open the league and work through the setup — either the guided setup wizard or the section editor. The parts that matter before the first meet:

• Age rule and age brackets — how competition age is computed (e.g. as of June 15) and the age groups.
• Event catalog & event programs — the events your league swims and the named programs (dual meet, championship, time trials) built from them.
• Seeding & lane layout — lanes in your pools, dual/tri lane splits, championship circle-seeding.
• Scoring tables and max-events caps.

See Leagues & rules. You can also import a published league config (JSON/YAML) instead of editing by hand.

3. Create the teams (and pools)

Admin → Teams & Pools. Add each club — creating a team also creates its home pool in the same step (course, lanes, timezone). Add any extra venues as pools.

The team abbreviation can’t be changed later, so double-check it — fixing a typo means deleting and re-creating the team.

4. Templates (if you’re not using league programs)

The meet wizard offers your league’s event programs directly, so many leagues skip stored templates entirely. Create stored templates (Admin → Templates) when you want a program that’s tweaked per-pool or shared outside a league — you can materialize one from a league program, clone an existing template, or build one from scratch, then link it to your league.

5. Accounts for the clubs

Create a user per club and grant them team admin on their team, so each club manages its own roster and entries — see Roles & permissions.

6. Rosters

Each club (or you) imports its roster — SD3, Lenex, or CSV — and clears the review queue. See Rosters & participants.

7. Build the season

Two options:

• Season schedule builder (league → Schedule): lay out the whole season’s meets in one screen — dates, hosts, participants, programs — and create them in bulk. Teams, host flags, and lane assignments are wired automatically. (The builder needs teams and at least one template/program to exist — it will tell you what’s missing.)
• One meet at a time: see Create a meet, then add the participating teams on the meet’s Details tab.

From here, the regular meet workflow takes over — Running a meet.