Leading the way for pickleball in New Zealand
Rotorua Pickleball Club holds a special place in New Zealand’s pickleball community. Founded in August 2015, it was the country’s first official pickleball club—and this year, they’re proudly celebrating their 10-year anniversary.
What started as a small group of around 30 enthusiasts has grown into a thriving club with over 300 paid members and more than 400 players on their Hello Club database. With sessions running multiple times each week across several venues, the club has become a central hub for pickleball in the region, constantly adopting new technologies and processes to better manage its rapid growth.
“We’ve grown massively in the past 2 years,” says club president Mark Lovegrove. “We’ve gone from 30 to 40 players to over 300 paid members, and we’re constantly adding new sessions to keep up with demand.”
The club now runs junior and beginner sessions, competitive leagues, their traditional annual doubles tournament and now the DUPR DINK Minor League Pickleball teams tournament. across multiple venues, including their main six-court badminton hall, the Tui Ridge facility, and occasionally the Rotorua Energy Events Centre for major tournaments.
The Rotorua Pickleball Club has consistently been an early adopter of new technology - being the first club to use Challonge for a doubles tournament, followed by Pickleball Brackets, and for the last two years have used Swish for running their annual doubles tournament.
Growing pains: Managing a club on spreadsheets
Like many volunteer-run clubs, Rotorua Pickleball started with the basics: managing memberships and bookings in a simple spreadsheet. But as the community grew, so did the administrative strain.
“Maureen, our club secretary, was getting stressed trying to keep everything up to date,” Mark recalls. “We had spreadsheets for payments, spreadsheets for registrations. It was just too much as the numbers grew.”
The spreadsheet-based system made it difficult for multiple people to access or update information at the same time. Files weren’t easily shareable, and when one volunteer made a change, others wouldn’t see it straight away.
Tracking payments, registrations, and attendance quickly became a juggling act. Coordinating events and tournaments was equally challenging, with volunteers constantly updating player lists, trying to avoid double-booking players or dealing with no-shows. Communication relied heavily on emails and word of mouth, adding even more work for an already busy team.
“It was becoming unmanageable,” says Mark. “We needed something more centralised and cloud-based that everyone could access.”
Discovering Hello Club
Mark became club president 2 years ago and has since led much of Rotorua Pickleball’s growth and adoption of new technology. Always looking for smarter ways to run the club, he stumbled across Hello Club, though he doesn’t quite remember how.
“Maybe it popped up on Facebook or in a search,” he laughs. “But once I saw what it could do, it just made sense. We needed something to make life easier for our volunteers, and Hello Club solved that.”
The transition was smooth and simple. “We just gave them our spreadsheet and it was populated, done,” Mark says. “It was seamless.”
From that moment, Rotorua Pickleball had a live, centralised membership system where members could register, pay, and update their own information.
“Before, we had to make every change manually,” Mark explains. “Now members just go in and update their own details. It’s saved hours of work.”
Having everything in one place also meant multiple administrators could access the same up-to-date information at any time. “The live membership list is brilliant,” says Mark. “Everyone can see the same data straight away.”
Running a club the smarter way
Today, Hello Club powers Rotorua Pickleball with everything from membership renewals and event registrations to communications.
“Now members can just log in and see what’s happening instead of asking me every week,” Mark says with a grin. “It’s all right there—events, schedules, payments. It’s just awesome.”
With Hello Club’s communication tools, reaching members has become simple and consistent. As the club grew from a few dozen members to nearly 400, the platform scaled effortlessly alongside them.
Not everyone was on board right away, though. Mark admits some members, especially those used to paper-based systems, were hesitant at first. “They wanted to go back to the old way,” he says. “It just takes a bit of patience with some people until they got it.”
“I can’t fault it,” says Mark. “It’s awesome. Honestly, I don’t know how we’d manage now without it.”
Game-changing integration with Swish
Rotorua Pickleball was one of the first clubs to ask for an integration between Hello Club and the Swish tournament software. For Mark, this wasn’t just about convenience—it was about eliminating the manual work previously spent entering player information into Swish before every event.
Having to transfer data between Hello Club registrations and Swish was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors and duplication.
“The Swish integration was a big win,” Mark says. “It means all our Hello Club registered players are automatically transferred to Swish with one click from Hello Club. No more double data entry and checking we have got all the players entered.”
When the club hosted a 3-day tournament with over 200 players, the benefits became immediately clear.
“In the past we’d have people filling out paper forms and someone entering everything at a desk,” Mark explains. “Now we just use the Swish app on our phones as we walk around. It’s so much faster.”
Mark was also impressed by the Hello Club team’s responsiveness in developing the integration. “They turned it around way faster than I expected,” he says. “The support’s been brilliant.”
A Model for Other Racket Sports Clubs
For Mark, the benefits of Hello Club, and especially the Hello Club + Swish integration, extend well beyond pickleball.
“It’s the same concept for any sport, isn’t it? You’ve got a bunch of registered players, and you just want to drop that same list straight into the system you use to run the games.”
He believes the integration could help tennis, badminton, and other racket sports clubs streamline their tournament management and communication in exactly the same way.
“It’s a no-brainer,” he says. “You just can’t keep doing things manually once your club starts to grow.”
Advice for clubs still using spreadsheets
Mark’s advice for other clubs is simple: don’t wait too long to make the switch.
“Manual systems might work for a small group, but as you grow, they’ll slow you down. Automation is key.”
He’s also learned that the earlier you move to an automated system, the easier the transition will be. “The bigger your club gets, the longer it takes to move everything across,” he says. “It’s so much easier to set it up when you’re smaller and ready to grow.”
He encourages clubs to look beyond the upfront subscription cost and instead focus on the cost per member once the system is in place.
“When you spread the cost across all your members, it’s next to nothing,” Mark says. “People pay much more for other sports like golf. What you get back in saved time and smoother operations is worth every cent.”
For Mark, it’s about thinking long-term and seeing club management software as an investment that scales with growth, not just another expense.
He also recommends starting small by training a few “super users” first, rather than relying on a single admin. “Once those key people understand the system, the rest of the club will follow,” he says.
Looking Ahead
Rotorua Pickleball Club isn’t slowing down. They’re expanding and finding ways to balance growth with their volunteer capacity.
Mark himself had an exciting milestone—he was invited to play in the US DINK MiLP National Pickleball Championships in Dallas in December.
“They’re holding it in an indoor venue with 50 courts,” he says. “It’ll be amazing to see how they run such a large-scale event. I’ll definitely bring some ideas back home.”
For now, Rotorua Pickleball continues to lead the way, proving how the right tools and a passionate community can take a grassroots sport to new heights.
