Rowing Software for Irish Schools

Built for school rowing programmes in Ireland

Rowing software for school rowing programmes

The platform Irish school rowing programmes run on. Junior welfare built in, Garda vetting tracked for every coach, parents stay informed, and the teacher in charge of rowing stops chasing WhatsApp messages.

Book a demo Set up your club free

No card needed. Setup in a day. Free roster import from your existing school list.

Coach dashboard showing squad attendance and crew planning for an Irish school rowing programme

Why school rowing needs its own software

Rowing software for Irish schools runs every operational layer of a school rowing programme from one platform: training scheduling, crew selection, junior welfare and emergency contacts, Garda vetting records for coaches, parent communication, regatta entries under Rowing Ireland, school billing, and the audit trail the school requires under the Children First Act 2015.

School rowing in Ireland is smaller than in the UK. Most secondary-school rowers join through community clubs rather than school-run programmes, though some schools - particularly Castletroy College in Limerick and a number of Dublin schools - run dedicated rowing activities. Where school rowing does exist, the welfare obligations are significant: Garda vetting via the National Vetting Bureau for all coaches working with under-18s, Tusla notification protocols under Children First 2015, parental consent, and medical records. A generic "rowing club" tool with no concept of parents, no Garda vetting tracking, and no junior welfare workflow cannot run a school programme safely. Row HQ has those built in from the start.

Three audiences, one platform

One platform, three groups. Coaches do the coaching. Parents get the schedule. The school keeps oversight without sitting in coaches' meetings.

Teacher in charge of rowing

Your lead coach or TIC can:

Schedule training across J14, J15, J16 and senior squads
Build crew selections with full availability visibility
Take attendance per session in one tap per rower
Track erg scores and rower progression
Push announcements to a squad or whole programme

School admin / accounts

The school's administrative office gets:

Roster, attendance, and welfare audit trail
Billing integration (Stripe or school invoicing in EUR)
Trip and camp rosters with parental consent records
Real-time fleet inventory and maintenance log
Year-on-year reporting for the board of management

Parents

Parents see in their phone:

Training schedule, boathouse locations, pickup times
Their child's crew for the next regatta weekend
Camp rosters and consent forms
Direct messaging to coaching staff
School announcements about regatta season

See what each audience actually sees

Same data, three views. Tap a tab to see how Row HQ looks for coaches, school admin, and parents.

Plan a session. Build the crew. Check who is on the water.

Coach editing a training session for the J16 squad

Coach assigning rowers to crews for a regatta

Coach availability and weekly schedule view

Track programme fees in EUR. Audit fleet condition. Pull attendance for the board of management.

School admin managing programme fees and outstanding balances

Programme-wide attendance record across all squads

See your child's schedule. Get instant updates. Skip the four WhatsApp groups.

Built for the way Irish school rowing actually works

Multi-squad management

J14, J15, J16, Senior, novice, girls, boys - every squad gets its own coaches, calendar, and roster while the teacher in charge sees the programme-wide view.

Parent visibility without parent admin access

Parents see their own child's schedule, crew selections, and trip details. They don't see the back office. Coaches get one channel to push updates to families.

Aligns to the Irish school year

Term dates, Junior Cert and Leaving Cert study blackouts, half term, training camps, head and regatta weekends - all built into the scheduling layer.

School billing in EUR

Charge programme fees through Stripe or via school invoice in EUR. Track who has paid, who is on a bursary, and who needs follow-up.

Reporting the school will accept

Attendance reports, welfare reports, and Garda vetting summaries formatted for the board of management and the school's safeguarding policy.

Coach handover that doesn't lose data

When a coach moves on, the programme data stays. Roles transfer, history is preserved, no one walks out with the rowers' records on a personal phone.

Privacy and welfare

Designed for under-18 protection from day one

An Irish school rowing programme holds emergency contacts, medical notes, parental consent, travel details, and Garda vetting records for rowers under 18. Row HQ is built so that data is handled the way your school administration, your designated liaison person, and Rowing Ireland expect.

Designated Liaison Person (DLP) role with full audit access
Parental consent records timestamped on every trip and camp
Encrypted cloud hosting on EU-region infrastructure
Audit trail of every coach-rower interaction
Encrypted at rest and in transit, no third-party trackers in the rower portal

Irish GDPR Aligned

EU Cloud-Hosted

Encrypted in transit and at rest

Audit Log

Parental Consent Records

Children First Act 2015-aligned

Free up to 20 members. No card needed.

Get rowing software your school will sign off on

Free roster import, full feature access, and a real person walks you through setup. Most programmes are live within a day.

Set up your club free Book a 20-min walkthrough

How an Irish school programme actually uses Row HQ

Three workflows that come up every week of the season - and how Row HQ collapses each one.

Coach editing a training session in the Row HQ scheduling interface

Training scheduling

A coach plans a week of training in five minutes

Recurring session templates, squad-level overrides, and exam blackouts handled by the calendar. Rowers see updates the moment a session changes - no separate WhatsApp group required.

Recurring sessions templated per squad
Auto-respects exam and school calendar blackouts
Instant update on every change

See the scheduling tools

School admin dashboard showing programme fees and outstanding balances

School admin reporting

The school's admin office pulls termly reports in two clicks

Admin dashboards roll up programme fees, Garda vetting status, attendance, and welfare events into export-ready reports. End the days of cross-referencing spreadsheets the night before a board of management meeting.

Stripe billing + invoice tracking in EUR
Attendance and welfare audit trail per rower
Garda vetting status summary for safeguarding review

See the admin dashboard

Announcement log showing messages sent to parents

Parent communication

Parents stop asking what time pickup is

Every session, every regatta, every travel detail goes to the parent app. Updates go out the moment schedules change. WhatsApp groups and forwarded emails disappear from the coaching staff's evenings.

Parent app shows their child only
Instant updates on every schedule change
Camp and consent forms in one place

See the member portal

School rowing without Row HQ vs with

Job to do

WhatsApp + spreadsheet

Row HQ

Training attendance

Manual head count, parent WhatsApp

One tap, parent gets an instant update

Crew selection for the next regatta

Whiteboard at the boathouse

Live availability, drag and drop, published

Parent emergency contact

Word document on coach's phone

Built-in, encrypted, school-admin-accessible

Garda vetting status for junior coaches

Paper folder in the school office

Per-coach record, expiry alerts, searchable

Tracking who has paid programme fees (EUR)

Manual spreadsheet, office chases

Stripe + invoice tracking, admin dashboard

End-of-year board of management report

Two days of compiling

Click "export"

A typical Irish school rowing programme runs on two or three WhatsApp groups, a couple of spreadsheets, a paper sign-on sheet at the boathouse, and a teacher in charge who spends evenings reconciling all of it. Row HQ collapses that into one platform.

How Irish school rowing runs on Row HQ

For school programmes from J14 squads to senior crews at the Irish Championships

See pricing

School rowing software FAQs

Is Row HQ designed for schools or just clubs?

Both. The same platform supports Irish school rowing programmes, university boat clubs, and community clubs. Schools get specific features around billing, parent visibility, designated liaison person (DLP) roles, Garda vetting tracking, and audit reporting. Each programme toggles which features they need at setup.

How does Row HQ handle junior welfare and Garda vetting?

Every coach record can hold a Garda vetting reference number and expiry date. The system flags coaches whose vetting is approaching renewal. Under-18 member records include parent or guardian contacts, medical information, and a consent flag. Juniors cannot be added to on-water sessions until consent is recorded. DLP roles get full visibility across all welfare flags.

Where is our school's data stored?

Your school's data is held on hardened enterprise cloud infrastructure in an EU data centre, encrypted at rest and in transit, under the GDPR as applied in Ireland by the Data Protection Commission. We can share our sub-processor list and the underlying hosting documentation on request.

How does Row HQ align with the Children First Act 2015?

Row HQ supports the operational side of Children First - DLP access, audit trail of communication, parental consent records, retention rules, and role-based visibility. The platform does not replace your school's safeguarding statement, but it gives the DLP the data trail they need to operate it.

Can school admin see across the rowing programme without running it?

Yes. The school admin or accounts office gets a read-only view: roster, attendance, welfare events, Garda vetting status, finance, fleet condition. They do not need to attend coaches' meetings to know what is happening. Year-end reports export to the formats most school boards request.

How do parents access information without breaking the platform?

Parents have a parent role tied to their child's record. They see their own child's schedule, crew, regatta entries, and trip details. They cannot see other rowers, the coach's back office, or finance. In-app updates keep them informed.

Will it work with our school management system?

Most schools use Row HQ alongside their existing MIS rather than replacing it. We import roster from CSV at the start of each term and export attendance and finance reports for the school. Direct MIS integrations are on the roadmap.

Is Row HQ free for school programmes?

Programmes with up to 20 active members use the full platform free, for good - no card, no feature limit. Above 20 members you pay a flat monthly band by active member count in EUR, with every feature included on every band.