[Jamel_G]

As everyone knows the Great Lakes has always been a league that welcomes "Road Warriors" to our League. We have Road Warriors that have been in the league for so long that they are the core of what's called the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes is mostly Michigan coaches but we respect our coaches from other states so much that we banned the term "out of town" coaches.

In order to properly manage non local coaches there are a few key things that need to be determined up front.

Communication – It’s key to have a leader in the local league who can communicate with both local and non local coaches. This is key, because you have some coaches who actually game plan for each game that they play. The biggest issues we run into is a coach showing up expecting to play one coach and then having their schedule change to play a non local coach without an opportunity to create a strategy to play that game. If you can communicate changes in scheduling you’re already one stop ahead of the game on properly managing a league with non local coaches.

Flexible scheduling - A coach who travels to your state to play must up front set definitive dates in which they will travel to the playing site to play. If this changes that non local coach has to communicate this message in advance to allow schedule adjustments. Second they must commit to play a certain amount of games per visit and stick to that commitment. Third if a local coach doesn’t show up to support the schedule other league coaches must step up to give the non local coach priority to play. This will ensure that coach who travel “X” amount of miles has the opportunity to play their max number of games per visit.

Game Sites – The final piece is managing the playing locations to support non official game days. For example in our league the traditional game day is Sunday’s at Taylor lanes. If a traveling coach shows up on Thursday the league needs to open up their doors to support playing a game on Thursday, Friday or Saturday at some off site location that is accommodating to all parties. Meaning it has good lighting, good space, and a comfortable temperature climate.

The only other thing you need is respect and fellowship which is something that you should have for all league members both local and non local.