Creating groups of equal value / Making even teams

[jcarwash31]

I run a tournament where players sign up individually and are assigned to teams. They answer a short questionnaire about skills and experience. This gives me values I can use to try to create even teams. Last year I crudely used Excel and replicated a "snake" style draft, making adjustments as needed. This time around I'd like to be able to use SAS, but am not sure how to do it.

The number of teams depends on the number of players that sign up. It likely would be 4 to 6 teams. The teams should have a mean skills score that is as close to equal as possible. The teams should also have an equal gender mix, with ideally equal skill within the genders. The one other caveat is what we will call "baggage". Players can request to be teamed up with one other player, who must reciprocate.

The table below has 51 players. How would I go about putting them into 5 "even" teams? 

I know this will result in 4 teams of 10 and 1 team of 11. Also, with 9 female players, 1 team will only have 1 woman on the team. These are some of the possible challenges I will have to face.

Name	Gender	Baggage	Score
Josh M	Male		11
Dylan L	Male	Matthew T	12
Aaron P	Male		8
Alan B	Male		13
Bill S	Male	Sebastian K	13
Matthew T	Male	Dylan L	12
Katie J	Female		10
Carl S	Male		10
Mark J	Male		10
Nick B	Male		12
Andy M	Male		11
Nick k	Male		14
Erin B	Female		11
Michael C	Male		9
Alex K	Male		13
Victor P	Male		12
Shayne D	Male		10
Brian P	Male	Blake T	13
Blake T	Male	Brian P	15
Dre U	Female		15
Alyx A	Female		12
Jake T	Male		11
Justin S	Male		11
Sebastian K	Male	Bill S	15
Chad L	Male		13
Dan M	Male		10
Adam L	Male	Nick S	11
Sean M	Male		13
Mathew O	Male		12
Tyler O	Male		10
Joseph L	Male	Mike M	12
Mike M	Male	Joe L	13
Nick S	Male	Adam L	15
Sam P	Male		13
Ellory R	Female	Ben R	10
Ben R	Male	Ellory R	13
Manny M	Male		9
Melissa A	Female	Jamie F	12
Tracy B	Male		12
Kevin V	Male		11
Dan D	Male	Meghin D	7
Brad O	Male	James N	11
James N	Male	Brad O	9
Meghin D	Female	Dan D	7
Brock S	Male		9
Eva M	Female		14
Junior C	Male		15
Diana M	Female		9
Michael S	Male		10
Jamie F	Male	Melissa A	11
Kevin K	Male		9

[PeterClemmensen]

Before I start coding:

If I read your post correctly, you have three conditions in your problem ordered from most to least important:

1) If two players wish to be on team with each other

2) Equal scores among the groups

3) Equal gender mix

Am I correct?

This blog post and thread might be of help:

Split Data into Groups that Have the same Mean and Variance

Creating Groups of Equal Size

[jcarwash31]

Lets put them in this order.

1) If two players wish to be on team with each other

2) Equal gender mix

3) Equal scores among the groups

That may mean handling male and female separately, but #1 makes that tricky.