Allison George never set out to run 30 leagues. In fact, she started with one.
One league, 24 golfers, and a nagging sense she could be doing something bigger. Now, she runs Toad Valley, outside of Des Moines, IA, a course her family has owned for three generations.
Toad Valley includes a public 18-hole course as well as an indoor sim bay facility. And Allison George is, by her own description, a jump-in-the-deep-end kind of operator.
That was when she decided to stop guessing at formats and build around what she saw. "I'm a people observer," says George. "I watch what people's behavior is, and then I try to form a league around it."
Building a sim league that lasts comes down to one habit: watching what your players already do, and then designing a format around that. This course of action is how George turned one Toad Valley league into 30, and it's the method behind all six strategies below.
1. Watch first, then build
Your best league ideas may already be in the building.
Instead of waiting for the perfect indoor league to take shape on paper, George started paying attention to the people already walking through her door. After she noticed grandparents bringing their grandkids to the facility over the summer, she built a Multi-Gen league, a two-person scramble designed for exactly this pairing.
She didn’t start with trying to make a format fit her customers. She watched who was already showing up, and built for them. The behavior came first. The league is what followed.
2. Build for the player no other league is serving
An underserved group is an open lane. George found hers when she noticed a growing number of women golfers who wanted somewhere to learn without feeling watched.
George’s women's league, Chicks and Sticks, opens with 30 minutes of light instruction followed by a fun format. It has a waitlist of over 100, with players driving 45 minutes to be there. "Women are the fastest growing part of golf right now," she says.
With this in mind, she leaned into the demographic before anyone else in the region.
3. Give the league a hook that isn't about golf
The theme is often what gets someone to bring a friend. George also runs a craft beer league where "at the top of the hour we bring out three different types of craft beer," and a whiskey league built around tasting.
Wrap a league in something people already want to show up for, and the round of golf becomes a bonus. The golf is the reason to book. The league’s hook is the reason it fills.
4. Start small and throw a lot at the wall
George’s first league had 24 golfers, so that’s where she started. Her advice is to run with the 24 players that show up, and continue to experiment with what you have.
"Just try a bunch of weird stuff," she says, "because some of it is going to stick, and some of it is not." The players who show up for a small first run tend to re-sign up. Every new attempt allows you to streamline that league’s next event.
5. Change the format, keep the people
Rotating the game keeps the same crowd coming back for something new. Match play, scramble, flighted, themed nights.
George runs her whole calendar of formats over the same base of players, so the league stays fresh without requiring her to rebuild her roster every season.
6. Clone and recreate what works
The first season will be about the hard work.
As you build momentum, the work repeats. Once a new league is created, George clones it, renames it, and runs it again. That way, sweating over the setup the first time turns into a working template she can reuse for years.
One discipline, 30 leagues
With work ethic and attention to detail, George scaled her sim operation by watching her players and building around what she saw. She found a habit that worked — watch first, build second — and ran it 30 times over.
Tournament Management for Sim gives one operator the infrastructure to run 30 leagues at once. One sign-up flow for every format. Automatic scoring. Leaderboards built for the moment.
You design the experience for your community. The software runs the event.
