So You Wanna Run a Beer League Team?

Have you thought about running a beer league team? Ever wondered what it entails? In this episode we chat about all the various duties you might be asked to do, and the ones you should be doing without being asked. Then we touch on some common issues and how to handle them, and how to help out even if you aren't running the ship. Then finally you get some words of wisdom and helpful tips. 

Links

• BenchApp

Chapters

• 2:22 Team Manager vs Team Captain
• 3:24 Responsibilities of Running a Team
• 19:05 Common Issues and How to Solve Them
• 29:01 TheBeerLeaguer.Com
• 29:54 How to Help Out Your Captain/Manager
• 33:36 Tips to Make it Easier
• 36:50 Why Would You Want to do This?

Transcript

THE_BEER_LEAGUER: 0:07

Welcome, everybody, to this episode of The Beer Leaguer Podcast. In this episode, I'm gonna talk about what it takes to run a beer league team. The good, the bad, all the stuff that that entails. Kind of what I've done in 10 plus years of running a beer league team, things that I've done that fork, things that I've tried that really haven't worked, and some of the tips that I've picked up along the way. And hopefully, this will help you out if you are interested in running a beer league team, or even if you're just on a beer league team and thinking about ways to not be a total jackass to the person that is running it for you. Okay, to start things off, I am going to be really focusing on running a team that exists, not starting a team from scratch, because starting a team from scratch is very similar, but there is kind of the whole added work that you have to do for finding players, picking out team names, jerseys, all that kind of stuff that goes on with starting a brand new team, and that's, in addition to everything we are going to talk about here, it's like a whole extra amount of work, a whole other episode that gets done with a new team. So, not really going to be talking about that. We are going to be talking about running an existing team that is out there, and what all that tells. Like I said, I've been doing this, running a team for, I think it's about 13 years now, 12 years. I don't know, it's quite a while. We've always been in kind of the lower divisions of my beer league. We've had successes. We've had terrible failures. We've been a really good team for a couple of years. We've been a really bad team for a couple of years. We've had mass exoduses, and then the last four or five years, it's pretty much been the same team year in and year out. So I've kind of seen all different sides of things with it. So I think I have a pretty good perspective of that, along with talking to a lot of other people that run some of the other teams, lower and upper teams, and in the same areas that I am, and kind of passing along advice and things that we've seen happen, things we don't want to have happen, and sometimes it's just commiserating about some of the crap that does happen from day to day of doing that. So first, I'm going to make what is sometimes a distinction between a team captain and a team manager. Now, those can be two different things. You can have a team captain. Usually that's kind of the person that is in charge of the on-ice stuff, and then your team manager, which is generally a person that's more in charge of the off-ice stuff. Sometimes those can be two different people. I think overall in beer league, that's usually one person that does all of that. So throughout this entire episode, I'm going to be referring to this as one person that is doing the kind of the team-captaining, team-managing. I'll probably be using those terms interchangeably throughout this, but just know that. So when you're talking to someone to find out what they do on the team, if they say that their team manager could be slightly different than team captain, might be the same thing. Sometimes team manager refers to somebody that kind of runs the team, maybe doesn't really play. That's also something I've seen. But for the purpose of this episode, I will be using them interchangeably. So just kind of a quick overview of what does it entail if you are running your team, if you are the captain manager of your team. Well, it means you're the point person usually for everything. You're going to be the point person for your team. If anybody on your team has questions, if other teams have questions, if the league has things they need to be talking to you about, everybody. You're kind of the one person that is the go-to shop for everything that people want to know about stuff with your team. So be ready for that. Also, you are probably going to be the person that is either in charge of or has to at least be aware of and coordinate things like scheduling, things like making sure everybody gets paid, making sure everybody has, you know, if you need matching jerseys or at least same color, make sure everybody has those types of things. Any kind of issues that arise on your team, you're going to be probably the person that's looked forward to, you know, solve what could be, you know, conflict and personal issues that people have going on within the team. So there's a lot of little hidden things that can happen throughout a team that you're going to be looked at. Like I said, either be the person that takes charge and handles it or know who is and can answer questions about it, because people will be asking you about this stuff. So let's see if we can break down some of these things a little bit more specifically of what you probably are going to be having to deal with. First off, and this is kind of always the biggest bugaboo, is being the person that is in charge of money. You know, and this can be a lot of different things when I say this, being in charge of money. Now, you can be the person that pays for your whole team for your league fees, and everybody pays you and you have to chase them down, you can be that person. You can be the person that, if everybody pays individually, you're the one that the team is going to be asking, hey, did everybody pay, the league's going to be going to, hey, these are the people that didn't pay, and you're going to have to chase them down for that. If you have people that pay game by game basis, you're going to be the person that has to be in charge of knowing about these things, you know, or making sure somebody knows who's in charge of this, either paying you, paying someone else, paying the league, whatever it is. You're the person that has to deal with the money stuff. And honestly, that's usually the biggest pain in the butt is dealing with the money stuff. But somebody has to be that person. So it's usually the team captain that gets that. Also, kind of on a similar note with that is jerseys, making sure that your team is compliant with whatever your league's mandate is for jerseys. Some leagues are super open with it and just, hey, everybody has to have a same color jersey. So you go, hey, guys, we all have blue jerseys. And you all have probably blank jerseys or maybe a couple people have jerseys that have something little on them, that little logo, some kind of practice thing or something that they were doing, and that's fine. Some leagues, I know, have it where everybody has to have the exact same jersey, has to have matching helmets, has to have matching socks. I've even heard of places that require all the team's pants to be the same. So you either need same color pants or shells or something like that. That's a little extreme. The league that I'm in, they require a band of the team to have matching jerseys with a name and a number, and that's it. And the big requirements with that is the name on the back so you can see who it is, and then a number that's not taped on, an actual number. Beyond that, they're generally pretty flexible for, you know, some people have, like, nice sonar numbers, some people have the complete die-sub jerseys and stuff like that. But just so that it's clear names and numbers and same jersey. And also, my league requires teams to have a home and a road jersey. I know some leagues don't do that, and they just require every team to have a different color. You know, and someone has to be in charge of making sure that your team has that and that it's covered. New players coming in can fill their requirement. Either be that you have a pool of jerseys that new people just pick up from, or maybe everybody that's new has to buy a jersey. And where do they buy those from? And how do they get them? Or are they up to themselves to get them? That's on your team captain, team manager to handle all that stuff and make sure that everybody is compliant for the league, to make sure everybody's compliant for the league, and able to actually play for your team. So finding out those requirements and enforcing them on your team level, that's a big part of it as well. And it relates to the money management stuff, because if you are doing like team orders of jerseys, then more than likely, you're the person that is in charge of getting everybody's money pulled together to order the jerseys. So falls in line with that. The kind of responsibility that you have running a team is building out your roster. You know, actually making sure that you have a roster of players. So that can be everything from recruiting new players, I guess, cutting players, if that's the thing that you do. Figuring out, I say figuring out lines. And when I say figuring out lines, I don't always necessarily mean, you know, having full lineups for every game of, you know, hey, this person's number one left wing, this person's number, you know, number three center, things like that. You don't have to do that, but having some structure and idea of what people can and are willing to play, just so you don't have, you know, 10 guys show up and all go, well, I just play center. That's it. I'm a center. Nothing else. And, you know, then having to figure out, well, how do we, how do you play 10 centers out there? And it's a very beer league thing to do. But just having some semblance of knowing, you know, where people can and can't play, who should and shouldn't be probably playing together and making sure you have the right number of people for that. One of the big things I know that I run into when we have people checking in for games is trying to figure out you have a proper number. Certain numbers are easier versus harder to figure out how many guys to have. You know, like, it's very easy. If you have 10 skaters, that's super easy. 10 skaters is, you know, six forwards, four D. Boom, done, easy. But what do you do when you have 12? You know, do you run three centers, two sets of wings, and five defensemen? Do you run six D and just six forwards? You know, how do you start doing that? You know, two centers, three sets of wings, four D. It's kind of knowing then. That's why I say kind of figuring out the lineup of knowing, you know, people where they're willing to play and not just where they're willing to play, but where they should or shouldn't be playing to figure these things out. Maybe it helps if you try and get, you know, an extra player then to come in for that game to kind of even stuff out and make it more even lineup or not. So it's being aware of that and keeping up with that is a big point for, you know, team captain, team manager to have that stuff. And being the one point of contact that people go to to say, hey, I'm not going to make this game, or hey, I can make these games, or, you know, hey, we're on vacation for two weeks. We're going to miss these next couple of games and find a replacement for that. And that includes goalies, obviously. You need a goalie. So it's having somebody that is aware of if your goalie is not going to be there for games, or if they can't make certain dates, or regularly can't make certain games, making sure you have somebody for that. I mean, maybe your goalie says, hey, you know, I can't make any games that are Sunday nights or Tuesday nights, for whatever outstanding thing they have going on. And you just know you have to find somebody to fill in for that. It's really being that person or assigning that task to somebody else. Some of it's delegating to get this task out, but making sure that you have that, because if you don't have a goalie show up, everyone's looking at you. For those of you doing the audio only version of this, I was sticking my finger pointing up to the camera like they used to do in the old 3D movies. And finally, kind of the simplest thing of making sure your roster is set is not having too many or too few skaters. You know, if people are calling out and stuff, not showing up and going, hey, we've only got four tonight. But by the same token, if everybody's available and you say yes to everyone, not having a game where you have like 21 guys showing up to play, because that's not fun either. Neither one of those is fun. So it's massaging that and figuring that out. While you're doing that, while you're massaging that, while you figure that out, another responsibility you have is being kind of the boss of game day. And, you know, making, like I said, making sure the roster, making sure who's showing up, things like that. Making sure everybody knows when and where the games actually are, so they know when and where to show up. And if they're showing up to those games. And then any other kind of game day duties that your league might ask you to do. My league, one of the things that your captain is also responsible for is we have to pay the refs every game, so we have to bring money for that, and we have to supply our scorekeeper with a roster of who's there for the game. So not a big deal, but it's something that has to be done every game. And it's the captain's job to do that. Of course, you can delegate that to someone else. But being the captain, if one of those things that doesn't get done, they're coming to you. They're looking at you. They're not gonna care that you say, oh, so-and-so is supposed to bring it. And then they said they couldn't make it last minute. So yeah, sorry, we can't pay refs. Or sorry, we don't have, you know, the rosters for scorekeepers to input stuff. Nope, that's on you to make sure that all that stuff gets done. So that's why I say being the game day boss, being in charge of your team for game day. The other thing that you are in charge of, and you may not really consider it until it's, well, until it kind of happens, is being the liaison to the league, not just, you know, for other teams, not just for your team, but to the league. And that can be different for every league that you're in. That can be, you know, making sure that, one, the league knows you're planning to play in it, first off. But like we were talking about jerseys, making sure that you have that communication back and forth with the league, that that is all set and correct. Making sure that, you know, you get the schedule from the league. And if you have to tell the league certain things, like say, hey, we, you know, can't play certain nights, making sure the league is aware of that, you know, so that that stuff gets handled. You know, and like I was talking about, turning in things like rosters and handling all those types of things. Also, making sure if your team's not going to be around for a while. One of the things that my team runs into is occasionally, a chunk of us will go play an out-of-town tournament, you know, for a weekend. And that would really suck if the rest of the team had to play. And hey, there's, you know, seven, eight guys not there because we're at an out-of-town tournament. So, it's making sure the league knows that. And fortunately, our league is big enough and kind of organized enough that they handle those things pretty well. I have to say, hey, we can't play on this certain day or these two or three days because a chunk of the team is missing. Usually, they're very good about that, so that's a great benefit. But being the team captain or team manager or whatever, you're the liaison to tell the league this sort of thing and make sure that they're aware of that. So that they don't wind up having a game where you have four people. See how all this stuff kind of goes together and all kind of is the same sort of things they all kind of wrap back around onto each other. Finally, the last sort of responsibility that you have to be aware of and know about, and some teams do this, some teams don't. I think it's super helpful. I think it's something you should totally do. And if you've heard other episodes, we talk about this a lot, is being the social planner for the team, being the person that encourages kind of the more social aspect, the more off-ice fun stuff that I think makes Beer League fun. So that can be everything from planning an outing to a hockey game, planning going out to a bar or something somewhere, either after a game or just to watch hockey or do something like that. Any of these kind of fun things. Every year, we have people that will host like a cookout or something at their house. And that's not something I'm always planning, but it's a thing that's encouraged. And I'd like to think because I encourage these things and because I've planned some of this stuff, other people kind of take the ball and run with it. And it's helped out with that. We're here up here in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. And another thing that I will do in the summer, because people are kind of have a little bit more free time out doing stuff, and the families are around and stuff like that as well is I'll pick out a couple of Friday baseball games to the Guardians here and say, hey, Friday game, come on down, let's hang out. And they have a lot of nice areas for people to kind of hang out and congregate. And it's a thing where some people just come hang out with the rest of the team. Some people bring their families and their families hang out or sometimes their families are kind of off doing their thing and they're like, yeah, I'm going to come hang out with you guys, you know, three or four innings and see everybody and do that sort of stuff. So just try to do things like that, that help build team camaraderie. And I think make beer league more fun and make it more than just a thing you go to once a week and see the same people, get to know everybody, get to know what's going on with stuff. Also, this is the same kind of thing of planning some of these tournaments and things that we do. Sometimes we're not the whole team. Sometimes they are the whole team and planning that stuff and who would want to do that. Who can do these types of things and when can they do them and stuff like that. And then when we go out to them, doing things, it makes a big difference if you go to a tournament and everybody's staying in their own hotel room and you don't talk to anybody versus going to a tournament and hey, Friday night we went out to this place out to eat, Saturday where everybody's going out and we're going to watch, watch Stanley Cup finals or whatever is on and go to this sports bar and stuff like that. That's the stuff that I see and I think talking to other people, those are things that really people remember from these trips. That's the stuff people really, really take back. Now, maybe if you win and you get some cool prizes or something, that's something that people remember. But even if you don't, people more so tend to remember the office stuff and the fun things of that. And that's stuff that carries over and I think makes the regular season and your regular games a lot more fun. You've heard other people on the, on these episodes talk about that stuff, but that's super cool things to do. So as your team captain is the person in charge of the team, that's something you should be doing. That's something either you should be doing yourself or encouraging others or empowering others to do similar things like that for your team. So, so that it happens. All right. So now, you know, your, your responsibilities that you have, different things that you have to do, but not everything goes perfectly. You know, stuff, bad. I don't want to say bad stuff, but stuff happens. How do you fix those things? What are those things and how do you fix them? So some common issues that you're going to run into and how do you handle them? So a very common issue is last-minute cancellations by somebody, people having trouble keeping track of who is and who isn't coming to games. So I think the best solution for that is if your league allows it, having a sublist or reserve list or people that you know are available that you can call in and hopefully can make it to fill in for this stuff. Also, I handle this by not having an insanely large roster, but having a roster that is big enough to handle three or four people a game, not being able to make it without getting too small, and then having a group of reserves that you can generally count on. You know, the reserves are people you're usually going to ask a day or two before a game, so they have other stuff going on. But generally, you know that they're going to make it if they're available. So as long as they're not busy at 11 o'clock on a Tuesday night, you're probably going to be able to find at least one or two people to come and fill in for that. So I think having that as a healthy list that you keep, along with making sure that you do actually invite these people occasionally to games and not ever just keep them waiting. Because if you never invite them, the one time you need them, they're not going to be around. So it's kind of keeping that healthy relationship where maybe you have a person more than you'd normally like. Say you normally like to have, you know, 11 skaters. Maybe invite a reserve just to get that 12th person in there, just so they get some time in, not when you're desperate. So hopefully when you're down to seven skaters, they'll come in and be the eighth and be available for you. Another issue, and this is, I think, the biggest issue that you wind up having is people that just don't pay. So whether that's paying for league fees, it's paying for jerseys if you handle that, paying for tournaments, any of that kind of stuff, is paying for those things. I think that's the biggest pain in the butt for doing this kind of thing. I think most people agree that is the biggest pain in the butt for doing that. So what do you do about that? Well, you can go very hard line with it and say, hey, people have to pay everything up front before you play a game. You have to be completely paid up. That is the way some people handle that. You can also require like, you know, a deposit of a certain amount before people are allowed to play, you know, to make sure that they're committed to it, you know, not letting them play for free. Also, keeping track of this stuff. You know, that's that's the biggest thing. I think is keeping track of it and making it apparent. One of the tools that I use a lot, I'll mention a couple more times. I use Bench App for handling a lot of things. One of the things that I love using it for is for handling fees. It will send out reminders automatically. When you say, you know, you can set due dates and say when it's due, it'll send out reminders for that to those people, so you don't have to do that. And also, it will let you put in partial fees. A lot of people, you know, beer league can be expensive, you know, just paying league fees can be expensive for it. So it'll let you put in, you know, if people pay, you know, a hundred bucks every other week or, you know, something like that, and put that in and keep track of any reserve fees, because, you know, if you charge a reserve, it'll keep track of that, of who hasn't paid. So if somebody, you know, says, hey, I'll pay you when I get up to 20 bucks worth of reserve time, no problem, you can keep track of that. So having a tool like that is very handy. You can do something like that with, you know, like a spreadsheet, no problem. But that's a very manual thing. You have to, you know, check who's in and out of games and do that where something like Bench App, all this stuff is tied together. So as people check in to games or check out of games or you ask reserves, that's all in there as long as you set it up. So I recommend having some sort of way, even if you don't want to use a dedicated tool by having some sort of way that you're keeping track of this stuff and putting it out there. And also peer pressure. You know, I am one who is very bad about getting after people about money, but I will eventually kind of put it out there to the team as a whole. I hope that the peer pressure of that will push people into paying and getting that stuff paid up. And usually it does. Usually that works for it. So like I said, that's probably the stickiest situation you're going to run into, but that's kind of how I have solved that. Another kind of issue that you can run into is putting together, like I said, kind of putting the other lines for the teams, you know, putting together who's doing what, who's playing where. And sometimes I've seen teams that really have said about that, teams where people get really pissed about, hey, I'm always stuck playing D. I don't like playing D. Or hey, I always get with this guy. I don't like playing with this guy, that kind of stuff. And, you know, I mean, it's a lot of times it's petty things. It's beer league after all. But hey, you want to make it fun for everybody. So just kind of listening to all that stuff and doing the best you can with it. You know, that's something I do for my team is we kind of have set a set lineup for the most part that people play and as people that they have become comfortable playing with and alongside, you know, and it's pretty set. But you know, if certain people don't make a game or you have other, you know, you have reserves coming in or you just have whatever grid rosters for the game. You know, that's that changes it, you know, changes how that gets, gets set up. And I never have people complain about it. People are really cool about it because they know that you're not just screwing around with things. You know, I'm very open with, hey, we're going to try something new this game. We're going to move, you know, some people around, see how it works. And I'm very open to getting feedback from people. I do have people tell me, hey, you know, I didn't love playing with this person, or I really like playing with this person, or whatever, and trying to use that. So I think just being open about it, I think trying to have something kind of regular that gets set, I think, really helps, because then it helps when people come and go. It's just sliding, like, one or two pieces around versus every game trying to figure out what's going on and just throwing out there, hey, you know, the seven of you are playing forward, just go for it and figure it out. You know, that that never seems to work well. That also leads into people having ridiculously long shifts a lot of times, not knowing the position they're playing, things like that, which just pisses off other people and kind of just is like a cascading effect down the line up that just I've never seen that work out OK when you have a full roster of people. Now, it's very different if you're playing like, hey, we only have like four or five forwards, and you just go, hey, four or five guys, just go out there. Or maybe for the whole game, there's only, you know, eight of you or seven of you. That that is that that is definitely a way to do it. We always say we're just going to do a pick up style when we do that. And it's just, hey, try and call as best you can call out your position when you come to the bench. And I would say that usually works for about the first four minutes of a game. And then positions kind of become meaningless. And, you know, people just kind of do what they're going to do. You know, you tend to have the couple people that really do try and stay in whatever position they were in. And then you have other people that go, okay, well, no one's playing defense. I'll cover that. And somebody winds up being like, you know, always playing defense or something. And what are people that always wind up playing center or someone that goes, I only like playing the right side. So I only like playing the right side. So I'm always a right wing. It tends to go that, but you know what it does? I actually start to kind of work itself out when you do that. So that can work as well. Finally, I think for what I know of what I've heard, kind of the last common issue that you wind up with is, I don't know a better way to put it, but besides these people that are being drama queens. So people that complain about all kinds of stupid stuff. You know, people that complain about, you know, they didn't like having to play with this person. They didn't want to play this position. They didn't want to do this. They didn't want to do that. And everything's a problem. And I think the best way that you combat that is just being open with people, you know, letting them know, hey, this is why I have you playing out of the position of what you think, you know, because we have these two people, they're really good at it, or you excel at this. And so I want, you know, we have you playing there or something. And, you know, just being open with it and being very upfront about that stuff and having that, having that communication there, I think just makes a huge amount of difference. I mean, everybody's an adult, you know. So just having that, I think, really takes away a lot of the issues that you're running into. But from kind of the same side of that, but kind of the other side of that coin, is don't abuse the people that are super open to moving around for you, the people that are like, I'll do whatever you want, I'll play wherever you want. Don't just abuse them and move them every game. Find out where do you prefer to be, what do you prefer to do, and work with them so that they're not just getting kind of the shaft every game. Because even if they're super cool with it, I mean, one, that's not fun. Two, that's kind of a dick move on your part to be abusing like that. And if they're being super cool and being very open and allowing you to do whatever you need to do to help out the team, you should reward that. You should be like saying, thanks, I appreciate it. Hey, I'm going to try and get you where you'd like to be or playing with who you'd like to as much as possible. I would really quickly like to just take a quick moment to tell you to also go check out thebeerleaguer.com. Go there, you can get this podcast episode, all the previous podcast episodes, links to all the social media stuff. So all the goofy crap that I put up on TikTok, on Instagram, all those kind of funny things, clips of stuff like that, different ways to get a hold of the show. You can email the show from there, you can send messages, you can send text messages, like you can down the show notes, where it says text to show. You can also send voicemails to the show from there. So all kinds of stuff like that. Always at thebeerleaguer.com. There's also a newsletter that's up there that only goes out once a month, and it's just kind of all the things that have gone out that you may have missed on various medias that are out there. So go check it out. Really appreciate it. All right, now back to the regular podcast. Okay, so I kind of told you all of the stuff that goes on if you are planning on running your team, if you want to be your beer league team captain or team manager, whatever you want to call it. But if you don't want to be in and listen to this and you're going, man, that's a lot of crap, I'm glad you'll have to do that. But what can I do to help out and make it a little bit less of a pain in the butt for stuff that you do? And there's a couple of things you can do. I mean, one, like I talked about, a big thing is make sure any kind of payment stuff you have, get that paid off or at least let them know how you're paying it off if you're doing like a payment plan or going to pay an installment, something like that. Let them know so they're not having to chase you down for money. That's the worst thing that people want to do. No one wants to be chasing down their teammates for cash. So that's a big one. Don't say you're going to play and you're going to be there for games and then just not show up. Let them know if you're going to be there for games or not be there for games. It's tough enough trying to put together a roster for every game. And if you have people that you have no idea if they're going to be there or not, that just makes it even tougher. Because then that's how you wind up with games where you have seven skaters, and then the next game you have 23 skaters. Let them know. Let them know how they're doing that. Whether that be in a group chat that you guys have or an email list, or you're using e-vites, or like I said, bench app, or anything like that. Let them know when you can and can't make games. Be flexible about stuff. Be flexible about where you play and what you're doing and stuff like that. And let them know what you do and don't like. Be communicative about it. But don't be a dick. There's a difference between saying, hey, I really don't like playing D if I don't have to, versus, hey, I'm never doing that shit again. There's a very big difference there. Show up and be ready and able to play. That means whatever you want it to mean. So that's, you know, have your stuff, have your jerseys if you need them, have your equipment, have all that stuff. You're an adult. Take some level of responsibility for making sure that you're at the game, on time, ready to go. You know, not at the game. You're going to show up late and you're going to miss the first period, or you have to leave early, or you show up and you never have your stuff, so you get there and you always have to run back home or go find stuff in Lost and Found. Just show up, be an adult, be able to play. And kind of the last thing I have for supporting your team captain, team manager, the person in charge of your team that's doing all this stuff for you, volunteer to help out with some of the things. Even little things that I appreciate is we have a beer bucket on my team so everybody can have some post-game beverages. And I always appreciate when people say they're going to take it. When other people take it so I don't have to take it every game. And I don't. It very nicely gets passed around to everyone. So just little things like that help out. You know, people help out with taking pucks out, because I always bring the pucks to the games too. You know, somebody else takes those for me. Or if somebody takes and turns in the roster for me. Just little things like that seem really little to you. But most of the people that are running your team, they've got a whole laundry list of things like that that they have to do that are little. And just doing one of those things can be a big help. So look out for stuff like that, that maybe takes you an extra 10 seconds to do, but it's really appreciated. Okay, so some of my tips from doing this for a long time. You know, like I said, I've been running a team for, I think it's like 12 years now, through different things. I've picked up some stuff that I do and I think it helps. The first thing, have some way that you're handling all this information of your roster, who's checking in, who's checking out, who owes you money, how much it is, how you figure all that stuff out. Have some way to do that. You can do that super cheaply, for free with like a Google Sheets, or you can do an Excel sheet or something like that. I recommend and I use Bench App. You see that all over online a bunch of places. They have a free version and a paid version. Not huge differences between them. The paid version does have some niceties with it like texting and things like that. But even the free version handles a lot of cool stuff and makes roster management and game management and money management a nice place to have it. And it's dedicated in a place, so you don't have to worry about having it in a Google Sheet for that. So have something like that. I highly recommend Bench App. I think it's great. It handles all this stuff. They have some place to have that. Don't have it scroll down a bunch of different places. And you keep track of money in a spreadsheet. You keep track of the roster. You just have it written down somewhere. Things like, no, keep it in one place so it's organized. You know where it is. And that way, if you're not around and you can't make some games, you can pass it on to somebody else so they can handle it. Have some sort of a group chat somewhere. And this will handle a lot of things for you. And this group chat can be, I suppose it could be an email chain, but usually it's like a text chain. Could be a WhatsApp chain. Bench App has their own kind of chat system you can use. But something like that, where everybody can talk about whatever. I mean, inevitably, it will be non-hockey related things and probably lots of stupid memes, but that's kind of the fun of it. But it's also a place for updates to the whole team, so you can blast out something that everybody will let them know. Hey, you know, our game time got moved or hey, this game got canceled or something like that. Having an easy way to do that and have it set up before you need it, because you don't want to be scrambling going, hey, our game tonight got canceled and scrambling to get everybody's, you know, phone number to try and text them. Have that set up beforehand. This is something I do always in the beginning of the year, is have a group text set up with everyone on there, you know, and whatever kind of stuff just gets chatted out through everybody for the year, but then it's there if you need it for an important thing to go out to everyone. Like talk about being kind of the social manager for the team. Do some stuff outside of playing hockey. Do some other fun things. Like I said, we go to tournaments, you know, maybe set up some pickups if people want to do things like that, especially in the summer if you have long layoffs. Go to things that aren't hockey related. You know, we go to baseball games and stuff like that. Maybe get everybody to go to a hockey game if you have hockey, especially minor league hockey or something like that, because it's cheap near you. Set up some stuff like that that's outside of hockey to do some fun stuff. Maybe it's everybody goes and meets up at the bar and watches a game on TV one night. Set some things like that up. It'll make a huge difference. Trust me. OK, so this is a whole lot of stuff. There's a whole lot of things in here of things that you should be doing. You might not be doing problems that you may or may not have come across. How you fix them. So why the hell would anybody want to do this? Well, to me, the biggest thing is when you when you do well is there is such a satisfaction with all of it, that all of that kind of came together and worked out well. It's the immense satisfaction for that. That's an sense of accomplishment. That is a huge, huge part of all of this. Also, it's really building relationships with people, getting to know people on and off the ice, getting to know people on your team, other teams, the league, getting to know those people, just from a hockey basis, and getting to know other people that enjoy hockey that you can see out in the world that know that stuff. Or, you know, it can even turn into professional networking. I know a lot of people that have found, you know, like their dentist or, you know, there's a CPA through hockey. So you can use it as a networking thing for professionally or socially as well, for sure. So getting to do that, and being the person that's a team contact, you're on the forefront of that, and probably meeting and talking to more of these people with it. And finally, for me, what I always say, the biggest reason I do it is because no one else wants to do it, and that means I really can't get cut from the team. So there you go, folks. All the things that I think you need to know to run your own beer league hockey team. I would love to hear if you have had similar problems to some of the stuff I talk about, similar responsibilities, different things that you've had to do running a team, or you've seen people run things completely differently that has or hasn't worked. I had, at one point, my team, almost everyone on the team left for various reasons, and there was only a couple of weeks to go before the season started, and it was me, one other guy, and a guy that barely showed up, and we had to figure out how to put a team together. So you can wind up in a lot of weird situations, and have some good stuff come out of it. So I'd love to hear that stuff from you. Let me know. Shoot me a text. You can get that down in the show description, or go over to thebeerleaguer.com, and find all the different ways you can get ahold of the show. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this stuff. All right, everybody, thanks a lot for listening, and we'll catch you in the next one.