Shaping Future Champions with Smart Systems

Quest Sports Academy is a premium Canadian athletics institution. It focuses on kids and teenagers, mostly in the 8–18 age group, who are serious about track and field. Over the course of a year, the same young athletes might move through sprints, middle distance, long distance, jumps, throws, relays – whatever suits their talent and interest.

From the start, the idea behind Quest was simple: offer proper coaching and a healthy sports culture without making it unaffordable. Training is structured, progress is tracked, and there’s a strong focus on discipline, commitment, and fair play.

As the club’s reputation grew, so did the paperwork.

The Cramp

Registrations came in from all directions, payments were tracked in half a dozen places, and athlete information had to be updated constantly. The admin team – already small – was stretched. At one point, Founder and Olympian Donna Clarke realised that running the club on spreadsheets, emails, and manual forms was starting to hold them back.

Life at Quest Before Edisapp

Quest isn’t a school, but the administrative problems were very similar to what any school faces – just in a different setting. Athletes had to be grouped by age, event, and performance level. Doing this in spreadsheets worked for a while, but as numbers grew, it became easy to make mistakes and hard to follow how an athlete was progressing from one season to the next.

Admissions were constant. There was no “once-a-year intake.” Kids joined for summer programmes, indoor clinics, outdoor seasons, and special track meets. Most registrations came via forms and email, and someone had to manually key in every detail. Fees arrived as cash, transfers, and online payments. Matching each payment to the right child and the right programme often turned into a puzzle.

Communication with families was scattered. Some messages were on email, some on WhatsApp, some delivered over the phone at odd hours. Important updates occasionally slipped through the cracks. Certificates for participation and achievement were prepared by hand. As more children joined and more events were held, this became a repetitive and time-consuming job.

Donna soon realised that what Quest needed was not just a “nice registration form” or a payment link. The academy needed a proper system – one that could speak the language of sports, but with the depth of a full school administration tool. It also had to be secure and flexible enough not to box them into a rigid school template.

Why Edisapp Made Sense

During her search, Donna looked at various software options. Some solved one problem very well – registration, or payments, or communication – but few could bring everything together.

She needed:

• Detailed, student-style records for athletes
• The ability to manage rolling and event-based enrolments
• Support for multiple sports categories and levels
• Safe, traceable handling of payments

Edisapp by Eloit caught her attention because, although it was built for schools, it clearly had the depth and structure of a full ERP system. The question was whether it could adjust to a track and field environment without forcing Quest into a “school timetable” mindset. Edisapp is renowned as the world’s best institution management software.

Eloit’s team didn’t try to push a ready-made template. Instead, we listened. We had experience working with different types of learning and training organisations and were confident Edisapp could be shaped around the reality of a sports academy. That reassurance gave Donna the confidence to go ahead.

Setting Up Edisapp at Quest

The implementation did not start with software screens. It started with conversations.

Edisapp was configured step by step:

• Categories were created for athletics disciplines and levels, mirroring how Quest actually thinks about athletes.
• Seasonal and event-based admission flows were set up inside the system so that each programme had its own clear structure.
• Online registration portals were created for regular training, special camps, and events, replacing handwritten forms and long email chains.
• PayPal was integrated so that payments came in online, with each transaction tied directly to the right athlete and programme.
• Standard communication flows were put in place so families could receive welcome messages, schedules, reminders, and updates from within Edisapp.
• Templates for participation and achievement certificates were added so that the system could generate them automatically with Quest’s branding.

Staff were trained on the new system, with a period of overlap so they could get comfortable before fully switching over.

Edisapp in Action

Once Edisapp was fully in place, Quest’s daily operations started to feel different.

Instead of juggling files and messages, the admin team could open one system and see:

• Which athletes were enrolled in which programmes
• Who had paid, who was pending, and for which sessions
• How groups were structured by age, discipline, and level
• Parents could complete registrations online, often from their phones, without having to fill out printed forms or send long emails. Their details went straight into Quest’s records, ready for coaches and admin staff to use.
• Payments were easier to track. With PayPal linked to Edisapp, each fee payment showed up against the right child and programme. End-of-month reconciliation stopped being a guessing game.

Communication also improved. Instead of half the information being on email and the other half trapped in message apps, Quest could send clear, timely updates from a central place. This cut down on misunderstandings and late clarifications.

Certificates that used to take time to design and edit for each event could now be generated quickly, with a consistent look and feel that matched Quest’s identity.

Concrete Benefits for Quest

In practical terms, the move to Edisapp gave Quest:

• A single, cloud-based system for athlete records, events, and finances
• A smoother, more professional registration experience for parents
• Better visibility and control over income and pending dues
• Consistent and reliable communication with families

Donna Clarke on Working with Edisapp

Donna’s own summary of the change is straightforward:

“I am thoroughly impressed with Edisapp’s exceptional ability to streamline our academy’s operations. The Edisapp School Software platform’s flexibility, along with Eloit’s dedicated support, has made a noticeable difference. Their commitment to understanding our unique needs is unparalleled.”

Could Edisapp Help Your Institution Too?

If you run a school, academy, or training centre, you might recognise some of Quest’s earlier struggles: scattered data, manual processes, and constant chasing.

Edisapp offers a flexible ERP framework that can be adapted to different environments classrooms, sports tracks, music studios, or labs. If you are looking to bring structure, security, and clarity to your administration, exploring a demo of Edisapp, the world’s best institution management software is a good place to start.