4 Female/4 Male co-ed draw doubles

[J-Rod]

Hello,

I meet every Sunday with a group of people to play reverse co-ed grass volleyball doubles, and we want to play with and against every player of the opposite sex, and against every player of the same sex.  How would we best go about doing this without unnecessary duplications or omissions?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Jen

[J-Rod]

Sorry... I forgot to add that there are 4 Males and 4 Females.

Thanks!

[Ian Wakeling]

Hello Jen,

A perfect solution to this problem is not possible.  If there are not to be any omissions (I am assuming this is more important), then there must be some duplication.  You would need to play 8 games as follows:

M1 F1 v M2 F4
M3 F1 v M4 F3
M2 F2 v M1 F3
M4 F2 v M3 F4
M2 F1 v M3 F2
M2 F3 v M4 F4
M4 F1 v M1 F2
M3 F3 v M1 F4

It covers all the pairs that you have you listed, however some of the same sex oppositions are repeated twice.  These are M1 v M2, M3 v M4, F1 v F2 & F3 v F4.  The schedule must be played on a single court, in fact there is no way of creating a similar schedule that could be played in 4 rounds of simultaneous play on 2 courts.

Hope that helps,

Ian.

[J-Rod]

This is awesome - thanks !  Now I don't feel so bad that we couldn't figure out a schedule on two courts !