The holiday programme had been written.
The athletes knew what they were meant to do. Then the normal routine disappeared. No boatshed. No school timetable. No coach standing nearby.
Some training happened. Some probably did not. The hard part was knowing which was which.
Martyn O’Leary, Assistant Director of Rowing at Melbourne High School, had seen the problem before.
“In the past, I prescribed training but found it hard to track, and it wasn’t engaging some kids to participate,” he said.
The programme needed something athletes could see.
It needed a scoreboard.
There is nothing worse than putting in lots of work and seeing it all go to waste after coming back from the holidays.
Give the holidays a scoreboard
Holiday training usually pulls a squad apart. Everyone is in a different place, following a different routine, with fewer reasons to feel connected.
The leaderboard gave the group one shared place to look.
Athletes could train separately without disappearing. Coaches could join in. The trophy added some fun. Each new entry showed that the club was still moving, even when it was not together.
The original spreadsheet proved the behaviour. ChallengeBuilder now turns that manual system into a platform that is easier to run again.
Participants can upload an evidence image and the platform can read the key details rather than asking them to type everything themselves.
The technology makes the process easier. The idea stays the same: give effort somewhere to count.
The training had somewhere to land
One Melbourne High School holiday tracker recorded 637 training entries across 25 active submission days, with around 1,872 kilometres logged.
The sessions included rowing, erg work, running, cycling, walking, swimming, strength and flexibility training. More than half of the entries included evidence.
The figures do not tell us that every athlete trained perfectly. They show something more useful: hundreds of sessions that would normally have disappeared into the holidays became visible to the group.
What gave the challenge its shape
The tracker worked because each part gave the effort a job.
It engages the whole club with 80 athletes and builds a real community vibe and atmosphere, with everyone being part of it, including coaches.
The club could still feel itself moving
Holiday training usually pulls a squad apart. Everyone is in a different place, following a different routine, with fewer reasons to feel connected.
The leaderboard gave the group one shared place to look.
Athletes could train separately without disappearing. Coaches could join in. The trophy added some fun. Each new entry showed that the club was still moving, even when it was not together.
The original spreadsheet proved the behaviour. ChallengeBuilder now turns that manual system into a platform that is easier to run again.
Participants can upload an evidence image and the platform can read the key details rather than asking them to type everything themselves.
The technology makes the process easier. The idea stays the same: give effort somewhere to count.
Private effort becomes public momentum.
Source note: participation figures are drawn from the Melbourne High School holiday tracker. The wider club size of 80 athletes comes from Martyn O’Leary’s account. Individual athlete names and evidence links have been excluded.
Want to keep your group moving through the holidays?
Turn your training block into a challenge with proof, points, leaderboards and a finish line the whole group can follow.