Running a large baseball tournament is about much more than scheduling games and keeping score.
Behind every game are rosters, schedules, lineups, statistics, coaches, parents, scouts and tournament staff, all relying on accurate information to be available when they need it.
At the scale of Five Tool Baseball, managing all of that becomes a technology challenge.
Five Tool operates national events across 19 states and regularly manages hundreds of teams and games. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area alone, the organization can have roughly 200 teams moving through three different events in a single week.
That scale was one reason Five Tool began looking for a better scoring solution.
But the goal wasn't simply to find another scoring app.
Five Tool wanted a partner that understood how its tournaments operated and could help create a better experience for everyone involved.
As Five Tool President Lynn Vanlandingham explained:
“The main thing for us was being able to collaborate with somebody that had a similar vision with what we were trying to accomplish.”
Lynn Vanlandingham, Five Tool President
Building the Partnership Before the Season
Changing technology in the middle of a busy tournament season can create as many problems as it solves.
That's why Five Tool and PlayMaker began working together months before the summer season.
For Five Tool, making the switch wasn't just about choosing a new scoring app. The team needed to understand how PlayMaker would fit into its existing workflow and administrative processes before taking it into its first major tournament.
Vanlandingham said that preparation was an important part of making the transition successful.
“We worked with PlayMaker months in advance to really understand the process from uploading rosters, to uploading schedules, to the functionality of the system itself.”
For Five Tool, that early collaboration helped address concerns before the season started rather than trying to solve them once games were already underway.
“For us, taking care of a lot of the issues or concerns upfront, eliminated the hesitancy (to change our scoring software) by the time we got to the season.”
That collaborative approach continued throughout the summer.
Vanlandingham said being able to work directly with the people who could actually improve the product was a major difference.
“It was huge for us being able to work directly with the guys that can change code… and make things better.”
When asked to describe the relationship in one word, his answer was simple:
“Collaborative.”
The People Using It Had to Like It
For all the work happening behind the scenes, there is one group that ultimately has to trust the technology on every field: the scorers.
A tournament scoring system can have all the features in the world, but if the person sitting behind the scorebook can't quickly figure out how to use it, the technology becomes another obstacle.
Five Tool's scorers had a different experience with PlayMaker.
One scorer said:
“I think PlayMaker is a lot easier to get familiar with than a majority of the other scoring apps out there.”
Another was comfortable with the system almost immediately.
“After the first game, I was really set with it. It was a really easy transition.”
Five Tool Site Director Nick Klein saw the same thing across the tournament.
“I’d say probably 4 innings it took for guys to get completely caught up to the interface of the app. It’s super self explanatory once you get in and figure out the different buttons. But yeah, the guys caught on super quickly.”
Nick Klein, Five Tool Site Director
That matters when games are being played simultaneously across multiple fields.
The scorer shouldn't have to spend the tournament learning the software.
The software should get out of the way and let the scorer focus on the game.
Fewer Steps During the Game
The scorers' feedback wasn't just about how quickly they learned PlayMaker. They also noticed that common actions required fewer steps.
Making substitutions is one example.
“Making subs, compared to other apps, PlayMaker is way easier. You can go straight to the lineups and bring players in. It’s just way easier.”
Another scorer highlighted how quickly common scoring events could be recorded.
“I really like how it’s easily accessible. Whether there’s a wild pitch, passed ball…you can just click two buttons and you’re already there instead of having to go into settings and click a bunch of different buttons.”
Those small interactions matter.
During a baseball game, a scorer is constantly making decisions and recording information. The fewer unnecessary steps involved, the easier it is to keep up with the action.
PlayMaker also gives scorers flexibility when something unusual happens.
One Five Tool scorer pointed out the ability to properly record assists and putouts during plays such as rundowns, rather than simply recording a generic outcome.
Another appreciated being able to quickly correct player information.
“I like that you can always change the numbers of the players…or say there is a name that was spelled wrong or something like that, you can go in and fix it real easy and quick.”
The common theme was simplicity.
As one scorer put it:
“Simple. I think that’s about the best way to describe PlayMaker.”
The Game-Day Experience Extends Beyond the Field
The scoring experience doesn't end with the person entering the plays.
Once a game is being scored, the information can be followed by people who aren't physically at the field.
Parents may be working while their son or daughter is playing. Grandparents may be watching from across the country. Coaches may want to follow a game they can't attend.
For Vanlandingham, that has become part of the expected tournament experience.
“I just think that’s the expectation now, regardless of what sanctioning body you play with, there’s some sort of scoring mechanism there.”
The live information can also help when the unexpected happens.
Klein pointed to weather delays as a good example of how that visibility becomes valuable during a tournament. When lightning or other weather forces games to stop, tournament staff need to know not only where each individual game stands, but how the delay is affecting the entire site.
“When we have lightning delay we know exactly where we were at in the game, what inning we were in and what the score was.”
With PlayMaker, Five Tool can use its centralized dashboard to see the progress of games across active locations. That gives tournament staff a clearer picture of which games are underway, which have been delayed and how far behind a site may be getting. Instead of having to track that information field by field, they have a centralized view of what's happening across the tournament.
For an organization managing multiple events and dozens of games at the same time, that kind of visibility can make a significant difference when conditions change and decisions need to be made quickly.
A Partnership Built Around the User
Ultimately, Five Tool wasn't looking for technology for technology's sake.
It wanted a better experience for the people running its events and the people using the scoring system every day.
That meant making the transition carefully, listening to the people using the product and working directly with the team responsible for improving it.
Five Tool's experience with PlayMaker has been built around that process.
Klein summed up the result in one word:
“Efficient.”
And for the scorers, the experience was perhaps even simpler.
“After the first game, I was really set with it.”
At Five Tool's scale, that's what good technology should do.
It should work for the organization, work for the people on the field and make the entire experience easier rather than more complicated.