Who’s going to win the Queensland championship women’s eight? The answer for the last five years has been the University of Queensland, who’ve held a mortgage on the title since Toowong’s win in 2020. They’re favourites once again, but could we see an upset after a couple of representative rowers switched clubs last year?
Commercial Composite
Last year saw something of a revival for Commercial Rowing Club, with their array of youth rowers under coach Jacinta Edmunds coming back with a share of two golds, one silver and three bronzes. This crew of Anika Gundlach, Evie Kendall, Jemma Jansen van Vuuren (Surfers Paradise), Olivia Yuen, Meg Messer, Cianna Becker, Maggie Stafford, Bethany Petie, and coxswain Audrey Hewett are probably a couple of years away from challenging for the open title. Yuen, Becker, Stafford, Kendall, Gundlach, Petie, and Hewett make up the majority of a strong U19 eight that has a good chance of medalling.
Kand Composite
A Kand Rowing Club composite will want to upgrade 2025’s silver into gold. This year’s crew of Millie Campbell, Laura Chancellor, Zara Hilton, Sophie Malcolm (Centenary), Georgia Campbell, Rose Biddulph, Ella McKenzie, Madeleine Williams, and coxswain Thomas Coogan has the talent, with Malcolm and the two Campbells racing for Queensland at last year’s Australian Rowing Championships. The Campbells, Williams and Coogan are the only rowers backing up from last year, although any boat with 2024 and 2025 U23 Australian representative Sophie Malcolm in it is always a threat.
Toowong
They were the last non-UQ crew to win this event, and Toowong Rowing Club would very much like to be the next one too. Their top crew of Gabrielle Geldard, Alice O’Toole, Vivienne Noonan, Hannah Johansson, Elizabeth Musgrave, Elly Ready, Nancy Duncan-Banks, Jemima Powell, and coxswain Maddie Howard includes four 2025 Queensland representatives (O’Toole, Ready, Duncan-Banks and Powell). Ready and Duncan-Banks have made the short jump from the UQ boathouse to Toowong for 2026, but can they push 2025’s bronze medal winners to the top of the podium in 2026?
The second crew of Una Murphy, Matilda Dammers, Robyn Matthews, Tiggy Wake, Zoe Ball, Cate Ward, Jorja Mortimer, Katelin Douglas, and Jennifer Conn includes a Queensland Oceania representative in Wake and Mortimer, who raced together in the women’s quad and the mixed eight. Murphy and Wake were also part of last year’s bronze medal-winning crew.
University of Queensland
They’re the favourites, and when you check out the crew, you can see why. Tylah Hutton, Eliza Bridgefoot, Sarah Bourke, Gabrielle Ryan, Ella Welsh, Elizabeth Newell, Wallis Russell, Scarlett Woodbury, and coxswain Kaitlyn Shields make up a crew with no less than seven Queensland representatives in 2025. Bridgefoot rowed in the U23 quad sculls at the World Rowing Championships in Poznan in 2025, while Newell was the Australian single sculler at the 2025 World Beach Sprint Championships in Antalya, Türkiye. Newell, Russell, Hutton and Shields are back to defend their 2025 crown and try to extend the UQ winning streak up to six.
Our prediction
The University of Queensland owns this event in the 2020s, and we can’t see that changing in 2026. Toowong will push them the entire way, but will likely fall a few seconds short of their first win since 2020. We’re expecting the Kand Composite to finish third ahead of a good battle between the young Commercial Composite and second Toowong crews.
