Coach tools
Put together crews on a visual board. Move athletes between seats with a drag. Store lineups you come back to season after season. Close the spreadsheet for good.
What do the Row HQ coach tools do?
Everything a Canadian club coach needs to select crews sits in one screen: who has confirmed for the next session, current erg times, attendance over the last few weeks, and a drag-and-drop board to slot athletes into seats. Build the eight, publish it to the squad, and the system handles notifications - no hunting through WhatsApp threads or waiting on email replies from members who have not read their messages since Tuesday.
Tools That Make Coaching Easier
Less admin on Sunday night, more coaching on the water. See how Oundle Town RC coaches use these tools, learn what a coxswain does, or convert a single split with our free erg pace calculator.
Visual Crew Builder
Drag athletes into boat positions - bow, stroke, and every seat shown visually.
Saved Lineups
Store the combinations that work and pull them up again for the next race or the Royal Canadian Henley entry.
Athlete Profiles
Side preference, experience level, and attendance record from the member portal visible when assigning.
Instant Notifications
Athletes get notified through the member portal the moment you publish - no more pre-row chaos of "what boat am I in?"
Safety Access
Emergency contacts and medical notes are a tap away when you need them on the water. Stored to PIPEDA standards.
Build Crews in Seconds
Open the crew builder and availability is already loaded - green for confirmed, amber for tentative. Drag names into seats, swap the stroke after warm-up if needed, hit publish. Every rower gets told their seat, the matching shell gets booked, and the same athlete cannot land in two boats at once. Tuesday's club four or the CSSRA championships lineup - same tool, same session data underneath.
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Colour-Coded Availability
Green = confirmed, amber = tentative, greyed = unavailable
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Side Preference Indicators
See who rows stroke side, bow side, or sculls at a glance
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Quick Swap
Swap athletes between seats with a single action
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Boat Compatibility
System shows which boats match your crew size, linked to the boat booking system
Example: Coxed Four
Cox Position
Sarah Thompson
Stroke
James Mitchell
Seat 3
Emma Wilson
Seat 2
David Chen
Bow
Lisa Roberts
What Coaches Say
Saved per week on crew planning
Reduction in last-minute changes
Crew selection history preserved
"Setting crews used to eat my whole Sunday evening. Now the week's sessions are sorted in fifteen minutes and I'm back with my family."
Related reading
- Crew selection tips for coaches
- Getting training sessions sorted
- Making sense of ergo metrics
- What is an ergometer? Erg explained
- What is catching a crab and how to drill it out
- Free erg pace calculator
Have questions? Check the FAQ, read what other clubs say, or view pricing.
Rowing coach software FAQs
How coaches use Row HQ for crew selection, lineup tracking, and session planning.
Most Canadian club coaches are still juggling a spreadsheet in one tab and a WhatsApp group in another to figure out who is rowing what on Saturday morning. Row HQ puts four things in one place: a real-time attendance picture from the most recent sessions, a visual drag-and-drop board for building the crew, a publish button that pushes the lineup straight to athletes' phones, and a searchable history of every crew you have ever selected. The coach stops chasing availability and starts focusing on how to get the eight ready for the Royal Canadian Henley.
The builder renders the boat - eight, four, pair, whatever you are working on - as a seat diagram, with a panel beside it showing every member marked as available for that session. Pick up a name, drop it into a seat, and the system takes it from there: the rower gets notified, the same athlete cannot appear in two boats simultaneously, and the shell gets held in the booking system. Changing a seat assignment after watching the warm-up is two taps - there is no fresh spreadsheet to rebuild and no message-the-cox cycle to start over.
Yes. Every crew saves automatically with a label, session date, and result. Template crews ("Thursday morning senior eight", "Saturday novice four") load as the base for next week - adjust only the seats that changed. By season end, you have a record of which lineups held at Rowing Ontario regattas and which got reshuffled after a bad piece. That history makes the AGM debrief factual instead of a memory contest. Clone any past crew and it becomes the starting point for a new one.
Yes. The moment the coach saves and publishes a lineup, every assigned rower gets a notification: seat number, boat name, outing time, and meeting point. The coxswain receives the same alert plus a link to the complete crew sheet. Rowers who did not make the cut get no message at all - there is no awkward group announcement that someone is sitting this one out. Before publishing, the coach can preview exactly what each notification will say, so a half-finished draft does not accidentally go out to the squad.
Yes. Coaches at clubs like Argonaut RC and Ottawa RC call this the feature that killed the spreadsheet. When the builder opens, attendance from the preceding sessions is already loaded - who showed up, how often, and whether they were on water or erg. An athlete who has missed three straight sessions stands out without the coach having to dig. Erg results sit alongside attendance, so sorting by 2k time when picking a CSSRA or OUA crew takes seconds rather than minutes of cross-referencing a WhatsApp poll against a personal-best log on someone else's laptop.