It's Gotta Be The Strings

Men's lacrosse is a complicated sport in general, and the game at Princeton is no exception. Without Class of 1952 Stadium, we wouldn't have a place to watch our team play; without senior attack Jason Doneger, we wouldn't have beaten Penn; without head coach Bill Tierney, we wouldn't be able to revel in the memory of six NCAA National Championships, and we definitely wouldn't be "sweet" at "lax."

But every pass, every shot and every goal — the building blocks of a win — starts in a player's stick. And what holds the ball there? The stick's stringing, of course.

There are an infinite number of ways to string a stick, and every player prides himself on his own stringing job.

Typical sticks are strung with either traditional leather straps or pre-made mesh. Traditional stringing is uncommon nowadays among college lacrosse players, mainly because it is hard to maintain and fine-tune.

Mesh, on the other hand, is easy to maintain, relatively weatherproof and durable. There are several types of mesh, but the types primarily used are hard mesh, which is very stiff and nearly rigid, and soft mesh, which is soft and easily manipulated.

The mesh is attached to the sidewall through pre-drilled holes on the plastic stick head. This holds the mesh to the sidewall and top of the stick head. On the bottom of the stick, a separate string is attached to adjust the depth of the pocket.

At the top of the stick, the mesh is relatively tight across the head and is nearly flat, while there is a pocket that holds the ball toward the bottom of the stick. Shooting strings, usually made with thicker laces like ice hockey lace, are strung across the top of the stick and will affect how the ball leaves the stick.

NCAA lacrosse rules specify that the pocket must not be deeper than the diameter of the ball — in other words, when the ball rests in the pocket of a stick held horizontally, the top of the ball must not be visible underneath the bottom of the plastic. A deep pocket is an advantage because it makes it harder to check the ball out of the stick.

Fundamentally, there are two issues that affect how a player might want to string his stick: whip and hold. Whip refers to the way the ball comes out of the pocket of the stick, while hold refers to how well the stick holds the ball in the pocket.

A stick's whip is mainly affected by the depth of the pocket and the tightness of the shooting strings. Tighter shooting strings and a deeper pocket combine to give more whip, which makes the ball come out of the stick harder and at a sharper angle.

Balance between the two elements, however, is critical. For example, a stick strung with too much whip might result in a shot that plows into the ground well in front of a goal and bounces over the cage.

The opposite situation would be a stick with a shallower, tighter pocket, which would have very little whip. A shot coming out of this stick might fly high over the cage because the release of the ball from the pocket is not as crisp and sharp.

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A stick's hold is affected mainly by pocket depth and width. A narrow, well broken-in pocket will increase hold and make it easier for the player to dodge through defensemen and take checks to his stick without losing the ball.

Today, most players tend to string their sticks for maximum hold and a very high amount of whip. That style of stringing comes into conflict with so-called "old school" styles of stringing, which refer to the earlier days of lacrosse in which players did not spend so much time stringing their sticks.

Some that might be characterized as "old school" argue that today's players string their sticks in a manner that negatively affects a player's performance in games. Tierney believes that some of Princeton's shooting problems this season are due, in part, to the way the players string their sticks.

"With the way they string them, kids string sticks to hold the ball and shoot real hard when they're fooling around with their buddies," Tierney said. "You'll see a guy beat a guy, and all of a sudden when he needs to make that last pass, the ball goes to the ground, or boom, the ball goes too high — that's driving me crazy."

Tierney says he and his coaching staff are talking to players about restringing their sticks.

"I'd almost rather see them drop the ball with someone giving them a good check but other times making good crisp passes and putting shots where they want to, instead of taking a bunch of shots that look like bounce shots but they're not, they're just bad shots," he said.

While the players' sticks may be part of the problem, it would be too easy a fix to simply change the stringing — because not only is the stringing complicated, but so is the way a player uses it.

After all, a good player who knows his stick well — and can complement his game with his stringing — is a powerful weapon on the field.