Vicki has been with us since 2019 running the steadily growing region of Quad Cities Illinois-Iowa. For those unfamiliar, Quad Cities is a region along the border of Iowa and Illinois, with towns on either side of the Mississippi River: Davenport and Bettendorf in southeastern Iowa, and Rock Island, Moline and East Moline in northwestern Illinois. We asked Vicki a few questions about her experiences managing this unique dual-state region:

How long have you been playing pickleball and where did you learn to play?

I've been playing pickleball for about 10 years. I had a neighbor friend in Rock Island, Illinois that tried for several months to get me to play. I finally showed up at the courts one day and I've been playing ever since. At that time we were playing on tennis courts with shadow lines for pickleball. 

When did you first join PlayTime Scheduler as a regional admin?
Our club, Quad Cities Pickleball Club, had been using another app to try to schedule open play times and it was not really working for us. I started searching for something else to use, found PlayTime Scheduler in 2019 and became the regional admin at that time.

How would you describe your local pickleball community?
When I started playing about ten years ago The Quad Cities Pickleball Club had fewer than 100 members. In that 10 years we have grown 650 members offering free beginner classes to adults and youth, advanced training to members, social activities year round, volunteering for community events and in the fall hosting one of the largest tournaments in the midwest. Early on we had a couple of indoor facilities, one outdoor facility with dedicated courts and mostly played on chalked or lined tennis courts. We now have 12 outdoor playing facilities with a total of 66 dedicated courts and many more indoor facilities. There are a total of 46 facilities included within our region. 

What advice would you give to a new region considering setting up a PlayTime Scheduler?
It took a little while for us to really get people on board for using PlayTime Scheduler because we had been struggling with the other app we were using. We now have almost 2,000 users. To promote the use of PlayTime Scheduler we handed out business cards that PlayTime Scheduler gave us when we signed up and we encouraged the use of PlayTime Scheduler through our website and in all of our beginner classes. We also encourage people who contact us from out of town to sign up for PlayTime Scheduler to see where people are playing in the area. 

PlayTime Scheduler has saved me a lot of time as I used to enter dates and times for all of our venues. PlayTime Scheduler allows individuals to enter and adjust dates and times to fit their needs at each venue and for players to find others with a skill level they want to play with.