DaveyBoy;2310568; said:
my club lax days are about 15 years in the past. You're using terms with which I'm not familiar. I have an 8 and a 6 year old and I plan to coach them. I guess I need to read up more !
I've been doubting Myers as the right guy for the job. But perhaps this is the year to take it back to the level Breschi left it. Great win in SC.
I think that Coach Nick is fine for the program. They are doing well and looking better than previous seasons. It may take a flood of traditional LAX teams hitting the B1G before tOSU really gets behind the program the way they most certainly could. The addition of UMD will help. If the rumors of UVA and UNC are true, we'd be looking at having a core of very powerful LAX in the B1G which I think would be great for the sport overall.
So, the terms I was using... it's just a bunch of new and I guess old stick technology. The (Paul) Rabil heads have been on the market for a year or so. I think that last season they hit. Before that my son was playing STX K18 heads (Kyle Harrison designed them with STX) on 10-degree crank shafts. I'm still playing those sticks now because I love them. I think that there's a total of five of those heads in our house now. The head is offset 10-degrees forward and the 10-degree crankshaft offsets in the opposite direction. It was STX's way of getting around some patent issues. Sadly, STX realized that by doing so, they had issues if someone wanted to play one of their heads on another brand stick or one of their sticks with a different brand head. In the end they stopped production on the 10-degree offsets for the guys equipment. I think that they may still have some out there for the ladies.
So my son 'traded up' to the Rabils by happenstance. He started playing a new Rabil head over the winter and liked it with regular hard mesh and a horseshoe pocket. He wasn't completely sold on it and still favored his trusty K18 but I suspected that he'd switch to the Rabil because it has slightly taller sidewalls. Anyhow, we went into our LAX shop to pick up a portable crease for indoor practices a month ago. He started taking shots with a Nike head that had a traditional stringing and was absolutely ripping the ball. Being a junkie that I am, I had them string up a new Rabil head with a traditional pocket and a center-twist (aka pita). Since all of the short shafts in our house are either lead pipes (STX Titanium) or 10-degree crankshafts, he needed a different shaft for the Rabil. He found a shaft made by a small company called Epoch (pronounced epic I'm told) that is carbon fiber. The shafts are as light as a feather. Seriously light. Much lighter than even my lightest scandium shafts. Suffice it to say, after an indoor tourney when he scored, I guess it was eight goals in four games (I had to finally look it up in the stats... I under counted before), he asked for his other Rabil head to be restrung to a traditional with a pita. Frankly, I fell in love with it too. It had been six years since I had my own traditionally strung head and forgot how it feels compared to the hard mesh. I ended up having two of my K18s redone as a result.
Anyhow, I included a pic of a few of the shorties in the house. From left to right on the bottom row: My B-stick (K18 white leathers with a scarlet pita), my A-stick (same with black leathers on the outside and white middles and a scarlet pita), my son's Rabils on the Epoch Dragonfly shafts. Note the difference in the shape of the heads. The K18 starts its spread much closer to the base of the head than does the Rabil. My son primarily plays attack and spends a lot of time in the crease. That extra bit of pinch (they're all legal
) seems to make a pretty big difference when the Dpoles are slapping him around. The top row (L to R): My C-stick which I keep in the bag for kids at practice if they need a stick. It's also a K18 with standard hard mesh and a double horse shoe. The middle one is my youngest son's stick. He's a soccer kid and it hardly gets played. Finally, the last K18 is now the C-stick for my U11 who is playing the Rabils. That's done in a Rasta theme (he listens to a lot of Bob Marley before playing) and he strung it himself. He did an awesome job stringing it for his first go. I honestly didn't have to change a thing when he was done.
Funny thing about not having the coolest equipment in the house anymore... I just inherited my son's Cascade ProV helmet as well. I just started playing in an old-mans league so I needed something for myself. The kid was playing my Warrior helmet last year until my wife put my equipment bag behind my car and I drove over it. (You can imagine how that conversation went... driving over $1000 worth of equipment, much of which holding sentimental value...) I ended up getting the ProV as a replacement for him. It turns out that even though it fits like a glove, it is a LOT of helmet for a younger guy. You see ProV's all over MLL and college fields... He just got the matte black CPX-R which is a much lighter helmet and offers very good protection. It doesn't come down as far in the back, but it's a good trade of weight for minimal loss of protection. There's a lot of CPX-Rs at the MLL and NCAA level as well. When you go looking for equipment for your younger guys, I recommend the CPX line over the Pro7 until they get bigger. Either way, the helmet technology that is available today is amazing. Nothing like what we played with back in the day.
Anyhow, if you have young ones who are getting into the game, find a program and get active early... There's such a shortage of youth LAX coaching because so few of us played back in the day. If you lend a hand, even a couple of days a week to help run drills, whatever program that you join will greatly appreciate it. I know we would. Our program has to limit numbers that we take due to available coaches...
Best of luck! Keep your stick up!
) and have been helping out the local high school team. We just finished our regular season and playoffs start in 2 weeks. The program is fairly new and you can tell that they are really making some strides. 
