Player rank system and sorter

I have a list of say 100 (could be 8 to 128) contestants entering a knockout tournament. They all have certain ranks ability wise from say 1 to 10. they are from different gyms, different countries and different friendships.
I want to develop a system that could sort a list as well as possible that would spread the good contestants out so that they wont take on someone from their local gym too early (certainly not a friend) or meet with someone else as highly ranked in the early rounds.
each contestant would be entered on the system and we would pull the gym from a drop down list and the ranking and then let the system do the sorting. The results would be exported to excel. (the whole system could be built in excel)
we can do it on paper but it takes ages.
Think of it like an anti dating site where you dont want to meet anybody you have a connection with.