Coach tools for selection
Run selection on a visual board. Drop rowers into seats, keep the combinations that won at trials, and let the spreadsheets retire.
What do the Row HQ coach tools do?
One screen holds everything selection needs: who has confirmed for the next session, current ergo scores, recent attendance, and a drag-and-drop seating board. Pick the eight, publish, and every rower is alerted in the app - handy in the weeks before Head of the Yarra when the phone never stops. No group-chat archaeology, no waiting on replies.
Every plan includes the full coach toolkit - see our simple banded pricing.
Tools That Make Coaching Easier
Shift the admin hours back onto the water. Convert an ergo split with the free erg pace calculator, brush up on what a coxswain does, or look at how a working club runs the platform day to day.
Visual Selection Board
Every seat from bow to stroke drawn on screen - drag rowers into position for eights, fours, and small boats.
Saved Combinations
Keep the crews that came out of trials and load them again for the next regatta entry or state championship campaign.
Athlete Profiles
Side, experience, ergo history, and turnout from the member portal sit alongside every name while you select.
Instant Notifications
The moment a crew is published, each rower's member portal pings them their seat - the "which boat am I in?" texts stop.
Safety Access
Emergency contacts and medical notes are one tap away out on the water, handled in line with the Australian Privacy Principles.
Seat a Crew in Seconds
The board mirrors how Australian coaches actually run selection trials: availability on one side, the hull on the other, and a drag between them. It serves ordinary training sessions just as well as regatta entries like Head of the Yarra or the Australian Rowing Championships.
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Availability at a Glance
Confirmed shows green, tentative amber, unavailable drops to grey
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Side Markers
Stroke side, bow side, and scullers are flagged on every name
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One-Tap Swap
Trade two rowers between seats in a single move - built for seat trials
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Hull Matching
Boats that fit your crew size surface automatically, wired into the boat booking system
Example: Coxed Four
Cox
Matilda Price
Stroke seat
Lachlan Webb
Three seat
Zoe Carter
Two seat
Hamish Scott
Bow
Isla Bennett
What Coaches Say
Won back each week from selection admin
Fewer late scrambles before a row
Of the season's selections on record
"Sunday nights used to disappear into crew lists. These days the whole week is seated in a quarter of an hour, and trial results roll straight into the next pick."
Related reading
- Picking crews: a coach's guide
- Sorting your training week
- Reading ergo numbers properly
- The ergometer, explained
- Catching a crab and how to drill it out
- Free ergo pace calculator
Still deciding? The FAQ covers the common questions, other clubs share their experience, and the pricing page shows what your club would pay.
Coach software FAQs
Common questions from Australian coaches about selection, lineups, and planning the training week.
Selection at most Australian clubs still runs on a spreadsheet, a group chat, and the coach's memory. Row HQ folds those into a single toolkit: live availability drawn from the training calendar, a visual seating board for putting boats together, one-tap publishing that alerts every selected rower, and a permanent record of which combinations rowed together. Come trial season - schoolboy eights chasing a Head of the River seat, or a state squad building toward the King's Cup - the coach spends the hour on coaching decisions, not on working out who can actually make Saturday morning.
Open a session and the board draws the boat - an eight, a four, a pair - with its seats laid out, and lists every rower who has confirmed beside it. Drag a name onto a seat and Row HQ handles the follow-up: the athlete gets an app alert, double-booking someone into two boats is blocked, and the matching hull is held in the booking system. Watched the warm-up and want a different stroke? Two taps swaps it. Nothing gets rebuilt in Excel and nobody relays changes through the cox.
Yes. Each crew is stored with a name, a date, and the session it rowed. Most coaches keep a handful of standing combinations - the Saturday 1st VIII, the novice quad - and load one as the base for the next outing, changing only what needs changing. Across a season the record shows which crews raced at which regattas and which got reshuffled after a rough row, so the end-of-season review and the AGM report become a lookup rather than an argument. Cloning an old crew starts a fresh one in seconds.
They do. Publishing a crew sends every selected rower an app notification with their seat, the boat, the start time, and where to meet at the shed. The cox receives the same message plus the full crew sheet. Anyone left out this week simply hears nothing - there is no broadcast announcing who missed the cut. And because you can preview exactly what will be sent before hitting publish, a half-finished draft never escapes to the squad.
That is the point of it. The board loads attendance from recent sessions the moment it opens - who trained, how often, water or ergo - so a rower who has skipped a fortnight is obvious without digging. Ergo results flow through as well, meaning you can order the squad by 2k time while picking a crew for the state championships. The old routine of lining up a group-chat poll against a personal-best spreadsheet on a second screen is finished.