How I Accidentally Became a Pickleball Person

Okay, confession: I did not expect to become a pickleball person. I was a loyal padel girl, and in Dubai, that's basically a personality. Fast forward a few months and I'm checking the group chat at 7am to make sure I'm on the list, like it's concert tickets. 🥒🎾

It's all my best friend's fault

Let me back up. Padel came first. I even did trainings! Am I a pro? Absolutely not. I play for fun, and I take the fun part very seriously.

Then my best friend and her husband invited me to try pickleball. I thought, how different can it be? It's a paddle, a ball, a net. Different enough, apparently, because I enjoyed it way more than I expected, and now here we are. I'm one of those people. I talk about dinks at dinner.

How game nights actually come together

If you've never joined a pickleball group in Dubai, here's how it works in pretty much every group I've been part of. It all happens on WhatsApp.

Someone posts that there's a game and drops the schedule. Then comes the list, and everyone adds their name. It usually looks something like this:

Once the slots fill up, there's a waitlist, just in case someone cancels. Which, let's be honest, someone always does. Waitlist people, I see you refreshing the chat. I've been you.

I actually love this system. It's simple, everyone's already on WhatsApp, and nobody needs to download yet another app. Half the fun is the chat itself.

The stacking situation

Then you get to the court. A lot of groups use stacking: players queue up and rotate onto the court in order. Sounds fair, right?

Here's what I've noticed, though. In some groups, people get to choose who they play with. And when that happens, you see the same people playing with the same people, the whole night.

I get it, it's comfortable to play with your friends. No judgment! But if you're new, or you don't really know anyone yet, it's easy to feel a little outside the circle. And for me, the best part of social games is mixing it up: new partners, different styles, meeting people you'd never talk to otherwise. That's how a group becomes a community.

The best part of social games is mixing it up. That's how a group becomes a community.

Body shots and all

Quick public service announcement: I have been body shot. More than once. And yet here I am, still showing up, still putting my name on the list.

Which honestly tells you everything you need to know about how fun this sport is.

So I built a little something

The pickleball community here is growing so fast. New groups are popping up everywhere, which means lots of new organizers figuring out lists, waitlists, courts, and who plays with who, usually in their heads, between games.

And that's kind of my thing! By day (well, by night, after my day job), I'm an AI workflow specialist. Basically, I take messy, repetitive tasks and make them run smoother. So I thought: could I make this easier for the new groups?

So I built a free scheduler, with a little help from AI. Here's what it does:

• Paste your list straight from WhatsApp, emojis and all. It cleans them up for you.
• It mixes partners so nobody ends up playing with the same people all night.
• Sit-outs are fair, so it's not always the same people waiting.
• Open play mode runs a live queue: tap who won, and the next players step on.
• Copy the schedule back into the group chat in one tap.

Tell me about your group!

If you're starting a group, or you've been organizing one for ages, I'd genuinely love to hear how you do it. What works, what drives you crazy, what you wish existed. If the scheduler is missing something your group needs, tell me and I'll try to build it.

See you on the court. And if I'm across the net, please aim for the paddle. 😅