I feel obligated to give credit where it’s due, so this is how my wonderful game stick came to be.
Sure, I can move my feet, and I can do it faster than some. And I guess I’ve got a relatively intelligent sense of the field after seeing the game played roughly two billion times by ten billion players with an infinite catalog of different styles and methods. But when it all comes down to it, over the past two years, when push comes to shove and it’s time to put the biscuit in the basket, I’ve gotta give it up to the same stick I’ve been using since the summer of 2014.
I like gear. It’s without a doubt one of the more attractive qualities of our sport in a materialistic/hoarder culture. I like creative uniforms and pretty colors and sleek shoes.
All that said, I hate paying for it.
It’s too often overpriced and even more often gaudy, and lands in the gimmick category. I’m even pretty stingy when it comes to buying new equipment. It needs to be at least 75-80% marked down for me to even consider buying. I’m bad for the industry. Sorry.
Personally, I subscribe more to the barter system. I have stuff, and if I want different stuff, I need to release other stuff. Makes sense to me. Money is for airline tickets and burritos.
Finding My Game Stick
I was in California working the Tahoe tournament with my buddy, Kevin. Kevin is my college buddy who I pretty much have to thank for all that I’ve been able to accomplish the past three years after introducing me to my two favorite words: Seasonal Employment.
We weren’t working for the summer after having completed the ski season so we drove across the misery named Nevada to get to Tahoe to work the youth tournament. I had no idea I was about to find my new game stick.
Acquiring the Head
Anyway, we were working this tournament and I had been talking to the gear reps all week about this that and the third, and I had been not-so-subtly asking what they wanted in trade for some gear. I forget what shirt I was wearing, but it was something to do with lacrosse and the kid liked it, so I took the shirt off my back and traded it for a Rabil 2 (I think… still not exactly sure which model it is?).
I was happy, the kid was happy, and I had to work anyway so I needed to put on my staff shirt.
I came by the shaft in a similar fashion. I was up at Lake Placid the summer prior, which was my first summer after graduating from college. I had freshly finished up my tenure as 3d Lacrosse’s summer events intern, and to cap off my brilliant summer in Denver, I figured there was nothing better than to be at Placid, one of the holy sites for lacrosse.
In my travels I had noticed that the gear reps were not looking very chipper this particular Saturday morning, and looked like they could use a pick me up.
The Shaft
I had an extremely part time gig as a Monster Energy rep for my college, and somehow there was leftover product after graduation. My brother, Eric, had been hoarding a couple cases in his trunk, and I offered to trade the poor guy at the tent half a case of Monster for something. He asked what I wanted, and I said that I could use a new shaft. His heavy head nodded, his bloodshot eyes rattled, and he produced a Brine F55 ‘friction’ all nice and shiny like.
Got the head, got the shaft, but the chief operating software (hardware? system?) in any stick is the way it’s strung, how it’s stung, and the quantity of love and affection that went into its stringing.
Now I Need A Good Pocket
Full disclosure, I have no idea how sticks are strung.
I had a seventh grader fix my shooting strings maybe a month ago. I can’t copy a string job, I can’t do knots, I am literally at the mercy of some knots and string. But there are guys out there who make it their business to know everything there is to know about stringing, mesh, and every other facet of how to make the ball go where you want it to go.
On my first adventure overseas to attend the Ales Hrebesky Memorial (another lacrosse pilgrimage every diehard must attend) I met Mr. Joe Williams, owner and baby momma of Throne of String.
Joe was playing with the Nova Scotia Privateers (and still does), a team I’m very much proud to call my friends. Joe was there, and happened to be filming, when I had my moment of greatest foolishness with I lost my phone and passport while chasing the now infamous ‘Last Train from Radotin’. Fast forward to the end of the video for that magic:
Fast forward to later on that summer, I was heading to the World Games in Denver. I forget where I was coming from, but I got sidetracked somehow and wound up working security at a music festival in South Park, Colorado… which I was unaware is a real place. That’s another story though, for multiple reasons. Somehow I got back from South Park to Fort Collins, and all I remember is driving some guy’s van while the hippies slept in the back. There I crashed with my college buddy, Chapman. I think my brother picked me up in Fort Collins, and from there drove us to the sketchiest hotel on the planet that my father had booked due to its proximity to the fields.
I met up with my new friend Joe, at his Throne of String tent at the grounds, and I had the head from Tahoe with me. I had every intention of trading it for some sweet national team paraphernalia, but Joe took a look at it and offered to lace it up for me. I gave him my old stick to replicate, and he gave me back something totally different.
I had never played with this bizarre coated mesh, but I threw around with it in the parking lot with him, and I fell right in love. I went looking for a shaft in my bag, and tried a few different options, but the screw hole only lined up with one combination, the Rabil and the F55.
Since then I haven’t really had anything like it. This same stick was my go to in Italy, where I coached and played with Taurus Lacrosse out of Torino. It was my gamer when I played Men’s State League in South Australia for Woodville. It’s taken the abuse of the Ales Hrebesky tournament twice in my runs with the Glasgow Clydesiders. I put a plastic bag over it once and used it as a paddle. I’ve shoveled snow with it. I remember Kevin taping a windshield wiper blade to this stick and cleaning my windshield while I drove because my yellow ’81 Chevy pickup didn’t come with wiper blades.
Rest in peace, yellow truck.
I’ve done it all with that stick. I feel guilty saying that now, as I look out the window of this bus. I’m sitting up here in my comfortable (joke) seat, while that wondrous masterpiece bounces around in the luggage compartment. I’m headed up to Vermont to play more box. It’s just another adventure where I know I can depend on the only piece of equipment that’s done just as much traveling as I have.
