Personal Project · Year 6
Just Game Olympics
A multi-sport tournament I've been running for six years. What started as a bracket on paper turned into a custom web app with a live leaderboard. The tool got better every time the friction got real.
The Tournament
Just Game Olympics is a full-day multi-sport competition I organize for a group of friends — now in its sixth year, with up to 32 participants. Teams compete across a rotating set of sports in a structured bracket format, with a points system and tiebreaker logic that I've refined over six iterations.
I run everything: format design, sport selection, bracket structure, scoring logic, and day-of logistics. The event has grown every year, which means the operational complexity has grown with it. At some point, the tools had to grow too.
How It Evolved
Pen & Paper
Brackets printed out, scores tracked by hand. It worked. Barely.
Google Sheets Viewer
Built a read-only Sheets view so participants could check standings without texting me every 20 minutes.
Custom Web App
Live leaderboard, matchup display, game rules, admin panel. Participants tracked everything from their phones.
This is how I actually think about tools: start with what's good enough, pay attention to where the friction is, and upgrade when the cost of not upgrading gets real. The web app wasn't the plan from day one. It was the answer to a specific problem that kept getting worse.
What I Built
Live Leaderboard
Real-time rankings with points, sweeps, and sweeps-against tiebreaker logic pulling from Google Sheets.
Matchup Display
Every participant could see who they were playing, when, and what sport — no more asking the organizer.
Game Rules
Rules for each sport, accessible from the same app. One less thing to explain at the start of each round.
Admin Panel
Score entry during the event without touching the spreadsheet directly. Fast enough to keep up with live play.
The leaderboard pulled live from Google Sheets, so score updates during the event were reflected immediately for all 32 participants. No refresh required, no asking the organizer where things stood.
This is what happens when the builder and the organizer are the same person.
Six years of running this event means six years of feeling exactly where the experience breaks down — and fixing it. The app isn't a side project I built to have something to show. It's a tool I built because I was tired of a problem I kept living with.