Every coach draws plays. On a napkin at the café, on the locker room whiteboard, with arrows scribbled over a photo in the team chat. The tools meant to make that easier are usually a soccer or basketball app wearing the wrong court, clunky desktop software behind a paywall, or a generic drawing app that knows nothing about handball. So we built the one we wanted. A tactical board that actually speaks handball, works on the phone you are already holding at the gym, and costs nothing.
What was actually broken
Coaches do not lack ideas. They lack a fast, honest way to get an idea out of their head and into the team's hands. Four things get in the way.
The court is wrong. Most boards repurpose a soccer or basketball surface. Handball has its own geometry, and on the wrong court a play stops meaning anything. Spacing, the six metre line, wing angles: all of it becomes guesswork the moment the lines are off.
The notation is wrong. A pass, a run, a dribble, a screen and a shot each have their own convention. Generic tools hand you one arrow for all five.
It is built for a desk. You are not sitting at a desktop during training. You are standing on the court with a phone in your hand, and most tools are awkward there.
It is locked. The decent options ask for money, or an account, before you can draw a single arrow. The barrier to "just show me this play" is too high.
A court that is actually a handball court
We rebuilt the court from the official IHF dimensions before we drew anything on top of it. Forty by twenty metres. The D shaped six metre goal area, formed by two quarter circles off the goalposts rather than a rough curve. The dashed nine metre free throw line, the seven metre mark, the four metre goalkeeper line. The measurements come straight from the IHF Rules of the Game, not from a template we bent into shape.
That sounds like a detail. It is the whole point. A play drawn on a real court tells the truth about distance and angle. A play drawn on a borrowed court does not. So we got the six metre line right before we drew a single arrow.
Everything a coach needs, nothing they do not
Once the court was honest, the rest followed in coach language.
Real notation. Pass, run, dribble, screen and shot, each drawn the way you already draw it by hand.
Real pieces. Attackers, defenders, goalkeepers, the ball, cones, mini goals, zones and text notes. One tap formations for the common attacks and defences, then move every player yourself.
Movement, not just a diagram. Number the actions into steps. Pass first, then the cut, then the shot. Press play and the pieces move in order, and you can tune the speed per action. Export it as a looping GIF and drop it straight into the team chat.
One tap sharing. Press share and the whole play packs into a link. No account, no upload. Whoever opens it gets an editable copy, on their phone, in seconds.
How it compares
| Instead of | The board gives you |
|---|---|
| Whiteboard or pen and paper | A play that animates, shares as a link, and never gets wiped |
| Soccer or basketball tactic apps | A real IHF court and real handball notation |
| Paid desktop tactics software | Free, no install, phone first, shared in one tap |
| Screenshots with arrows in the chat | A proper court, correct notation, editable by whoever opens it |
Why it is free
Coaches respect a straight answer, so here is the real thinking.
Drawing a play is the most basic thing a coach does. Putting a paywall in front of it felt wrong, so we did not.
We are a small handball company. We cannot outspend anyone on ads, and we do not want to. A tool that coaches genuinely want to use, one that carries our name every time a play gets shared, earns attention by being useful instead of by interrupting. Every GIF dropped into a group chat shows "made with SquadX" to everyone who sees it. That is our marketing budget: being worth sharing.
The board is also the front door to what we actually sell. If the free thing is this good, the paid thing earns trust before anyone pays for it.
The board is the free corner of SquadX. We would rather earn a coach's trust with a good free tool than rent their attention with an ad.
Where the board ends and SquadX begins
The board is a standalone free tool, and it stays free. The full SquadX is the paid work: season planning with an assistant grounded in a real coaching method rather than generic AI, a session builder, a curated drill library, and player tracking across seasons. The board is where a play lives for five minutes. SquadX is where a whole season lives.
It is built by a handball first team around the method of an EHF Master Coach, which is why the court was rebuilt from the rulebook and not from a template. The people who made it know why the six metre line matters.
Related reading
Draw your next play
Open the board, draw your next play, and share it with the team before training starts. No signup, no watermark, works on your phone. board.squadx.app
By SquadX
