Coach Jonathan Edwards unveils the golden number of sticks any lacrosse goalie should have in their arsenal: 3. Coach gives tips on how and when to use them and creating equipment consistency. Coach Edwards also shares his philosophy on whether or not buying the most expensive equipment for your goalie will be worthwhile in the long run.

0:29 – Coach Edwards enlightens lacrosse goalies on the perfect number of sticks: Three.

0:41 – The hierarchy of sticks. The game stick, the practice stick, and the warm up stick.

1:15 – Creating equipment consistency.

2:00 – Breaking in your C stick and using it to experiment.

3:31 – Your hands don’t change, your sticks do. Get used to playing with unfamiliar sticks.

4:05 – Parents should buy cheap sticks for young kids, but once the goalie is grown, investing in a titanium shaft is worth it.

Introduction

Hey there. It’s Jonathan Edwards with LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com and today we’re going to talk about how many sticks should you have. For some of you parents listening to this, you’re probably going to cringe at what I’m going to say here, but I just wanted to share for some of the goalies who were pretty excited about what I’m going to say.

Three Goalie Sticks

So what’s the perfect number of sticks that you should have? The answer is 3. Moms, dads, it’s kind of like the number of sheets you should have in your closet. You should have one on the bed, one in the closet, one in the wash. The same thing is true of lacrosse sticks.

The ABCs

Goalies should have basically a game stick, like their favourite stick that is game ready. This is like your A stick. The thing is, you don’t use your A stick all the time. You use your B stick in practice. Your B stick is your stick that you use in most of your practice, not including the warm up. Your third stick, or your C stick, is the stick that you take shots with in warm up.

Creating Equipment Consistency

Here’s the deal. What we’re trying to do here is create a consistency of equipment and have backups. I remember vividly in junior high school playing on my varsity high school team. I had a stick which I broke. It was the first stick that I ever broke and I only had two sticks. I had one stick I used all the time and I had a backup that I rarely used and it had a pocket that I didn’t really like. I couldn’t throw with it. I hadn’t cut the shaft down and it was just a mess. We don’t want to have that happen.

Breaking in Your C Stick

As you get more advanced, you want to have a minimum of two or at least three. In warm up when you’re just taking straight shots from a coach or a player, that’s when you really want to break in that back up, the third stick or your back up stick. You want to get that stick throwing equally as well as your main stick and that’s going to happen when you get a lot of shots taken at it. That’s how you’re going to break in that pocket quickly, and you’re going to save that A stick for game day. That game day stick is going to throw nice, it’s going to be your best one. It’s going to be broken in real well and you’re just going to be really confident with it.

Experimenting With New Equipment

The cool thing is your C stick is the one that you should try stuff out on. Maybe a different pocket, a different string, a different head, a different shaft. That stick in warm up is the one that you want to basically experiment with. When you experiment you get to try new things and it’s a lot of fun. A lot of fun too is, if you’ve got another goalie on your team, is to switch sticks for warm up just to get your hands used to using a different stick. I always say your hands don’t change but your equipment might.