How to assign a numerical value to a name

[SHANNONHELP]

Please help, I’m a excel beginner and have tried everything I could to figure my problem out.
I am trying to create a spreadsheet for a team. I want to be able to get an average rating between my players. So I’m trying to list 1 players name and their rating and then be able to list all players they play against for each match and get the average rating of the 2 players. But I would like to be able to just type in the players name and it have their rating as the necessary numerical value in order for the equation to work. I hope I’m explaining this clearly enough. Thanks for any and all help.

 

[kweaver]

Welcome to the lounge. If I understand you correctly, I think you probably want a 2-column table (e.g., A1:B11) which has a header in A1 and B1 then the player's name in column A and the respective ranking in column B.
Then in D2, say, create a drop down to pick a player from that list. In E2, use: =VLOOKUP(D2,A1:B11,2,false) to get the respective ranking for that player.

You can do the similar thing for the other players.

Am I understanding you correctly? If so, does this get you started?

 

[SHANNONHELP]

Kweaver, thank you so much for your help. I did try this but did not get it to work. I will try it again following your direction and see if that does the trick. Hopefully I just put something in wrong.