High School Event Calendar with Ticketing
How to set up a unified high school event calendar that handles free weekly sports fixtures and paid drama musical box-office sales.
You can run both recurring sports fixtures and paid drama box-office sales from a single school calendar by grouping activities into sub-schedules. Athletic events stay public and free to view, while drama productions open ticket tiers that parents and students can buy directly on the school website without per-ticket fees.
Most schools struggle with fragmented calendars. Athletics posts games on one portal, the drama club collects paper checks or uses an outside ticket site that charges extra fees on every seat, and the main office maintains a third PDF. A single unified school event calendar solves this mess while keeping management simple for school staff.
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Organizing sports and arts with sub-schedules
Rather than sending parents to different websites, create one master calendar for the high school and divide it into clear sub-schedules. In Event Schedule, sub-schedules group events inside one schedule so visitors can filter by category or view the full campus program at once.
For a standard high school, set up categories such as:
- Varsity Athletics: Game dates, opponents, kickoff times, and bus departure notices.
- Junior Varsity and Freshman Sports: Home games and meets.
- Performing Arts: Musical performances, band concerts, choir showcases, and one-act plays.
- School Life: Parent-teacher conferences, open houses, pep rallies, and board meetings.
When families visit the calendar, they can view everything together or click a single sub-schedule tag to see only the basketball schedule or the musical dates. You can also embed event calendar on website pages dedicated to specific departments. An embed placed on the athletic department page can display only sports fixtures, while the home page displays all upcoming school events.
Setting up recurring game schedules and skipping school breaks
League play runs on regular weekly patterns. Typing twenty individual basketball or volleyball games into a calendar by hand wastes hours and invites data entry errors.
When you create an athletic fixture, choose Recurring beside Date & Time. Under Frequency, pick Weekly, check the Days of the Week the event runs on, and set Recurring End to On Date with the close of the regular season. For example, if junior varsity volleyball plays every Tuesday and Thursday at 4:30 PM through late October, check Tue and Thu and set the series to end on your league cutoff date.
High school seasons always run into calendar conflicts. Use the date exceptions built into recurring events to keep fixtures accurate:
- Exclude Dates: Under Exclude Dates, use Add Date to skip dates. Use this for teacher workdays, exam weeks, and holidays like Thanksgiving or spring break. Excluded dates disappear from the public schedule completely, so parents never see a cancelled placeholder.
- Include Dates: Under Include Dates, use Add Date for dates that do not match the normal weekly pattern. Use this for Saturday tournaments, rescheduled weather makeup games, or non-conference holiday invitationals.
If your athletic director keeps schedules in another tool, you can use two-way sync with Google Calendar or Outlook to keep events mirrored automatically.
Setting up paid musical tickets beside free sports fixtures
High school sports games are often free for students or pay-at-the-gate, while the annual musical requires an advance box office to fund sets, royalties, and costumes. You can configure ticketing separately for each individual event on the calendar.
For athletic fixtures, open the Tickets tab on the event and select Not needed. The game publishes as a view-only schedule entry with location details, opponent notes, and game times. Visitors see an Add to Calendar button instead of a checkout form.
For the musical, open the Tickets tab and select Sell tickets. Selling paid tickets is available on the Pro plan ($5 a month or $50 a year). Connect your school or district Stripe account under Admin Panel → Settings → Payment Methods. Event Schedule takes no platform fee or per-ticket fee on any plan, so the school keeps every dollar after standard card processing fees. For example, Stripe's standard card rate in the United States is 2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge.
Set up your ticket tiers directly in the Tickets tab:
| Ticket Type | Suggested Price | Settings |
|---|---|---|
| Adult General Admission | $12.00 | Standard tier, open to the general public. |
| Student and Senior | $7.00 | Discounted tier for enrolled students and grandparents. |
| Cast and Crew Comp | $0.00 | Zero-price tier with a cap for family allocations. |
To prevent confusion with seating limits, set an inventory limit for each performance date. If your school auditorium seats 450 people, enter 450 as the total capacity per show. A matinee and an evening performance on the same Saturday should be set up as two distinct events so each performance has its own clean attendee list and ticket inventory.
Scanning tickets at the door with volunteer phones
Drama productions run on parent and student volunteers. You do not need dedicated rental scanners, proprietary handheld computers, or specialized hardware at the auditorium lobby doors.
Every ticket purchase generates an automatic confirmation email with a unique QR code. At the door, ticket takers use their regular smartphones:
- Have your volunteer open the camera or check-in scanner on their mobile phone.
- Scan the QR code displayed on the attendee's phone screen or printed paper ticket.
- The screen validates the ticket immediately. If someone tries to pass the same ticket to a friend behind them, a second scan displays a clear warning.
If you run a live check-in desk, volunteers on the Pro plan can also use the check-in dashboard to look up families by name when someone forgets their phone or misplaces their email confirmation.
Note that while the calendar manages public event sales and ticket entry, it does not handle volunteer shift sign-up sheets or concession stand worker rotas. Run volunteer staffing through your standard athletic booster or drama guild sign-up forms, and let the calendar focus on public fixtures and ticket checkout.
Questions people ask
Can parents subscribe to school fixtures on their personal phones?
Yes. Parents can click an option to add an event to their calendar, or subscribe to the schedule live calendar feed. When they subscribe, upcoming games and events update directly in their personal Google, Apple, or Outlook calendars.
How do zero-dollar student tickets work if athletic games require registration?
Ticket types priced at zero can be offered on every plan, including the Free plan. If an event requires advance reservation but charges no admission, you can issue free tickets or enable Free registration with a fixed capacity limit per date.
What happens if a sports fixture gets rained out or rescheduled?
When you update or move an event on your schedule, the changes appear immediately on your public calendar and on any embedded school website page. If you sync your calendar with Google Calendar or Outlook, connected feeds update to reflect the new time.