Project: Pinnacle - Offset Points

Grab A Ruler, Nerds.

Welcome back to Project: Pinnacle. Here in part one of a six-part series, we’re going to examine the importance of a head’s offset point to the performance of the head. Hopefully, you did your homework and you have a collection of lacrosse heads strewn about your living space so you can interact in a truly tactile sense as you read along. If not, well, you’ve got time to go grab your current gamer and follow along. 

Now, we will be going through a core component of the design of a lacrosse head - the optimal offset point. I say optimal because you can put a pocket anywhere you want into whatever head you want. It might suck, but with enough ingenuity, you can do that. Plenty of people fight the very nature of their head to get the “feel” they want, but fighting the design is counterproductive. As the great Dennis Hopper, playing the maniac Howard Payne in the movie “Speed”, once said: “A bomb is made to explode. That's its meaning. Its purpose. Your life is empty because you spend it trying to stop the bomb from becoming. “

You have to respect the maximum offset point for your pocket. We’re not even talking channels or shooters or mesh types or anything like that. That’s the stringer’s problem, and we’ll get to that aspect later. We’re here to address this one very essential dynamic. Pick up your head and look at it from the side. Strung or unstrung, it doesn’t matter. On the lower rail, where the stringing holes are, where is the lowest (or in some cases the thicccest) point? That is the natural place for the ball to sit in the head. 

On many heads, this is a section that is around two to three inches long (in women’s heads it’s much shorter, which has everything to do with pocket depth but we will get to that later). However, there are some heads, like the original Maverik Tactik, where it’s just an inch or less - Maverik even gives these offset locations numerical designations in their product copy. Some heads have a longer “Max” offset point for a more nuanced and varied pocket location, one of the most recent examples being the STX Surgeon 900 and the ECD Mirage 2. The Mirage 2 is a bit higher towards the scoop which lends itself to a bit more variety.

If you’re still unsure, just unstring your head and place it on a table. The bits that touch the table when you lay it down are the maximum offset points. (Unless the head is trash or warped, in which case, refer to the previous paragraph).

The lower rail’s return to the scoop also affects the nature of the pocket. If the return is more gradual - like the Under Armour Command Low or the Epoch Z1 - it’s easier to build a smoother release without too much channel fiddling. Conversely, the sharper the return - like the Maverik Kinetik or the STX Stallion Omega - the quicker the exit; which can naturally produce hook or whip depending on the stringing and the face shape. The happy medium for both of those aspects is probably the Warrior Evolution 4 as there is a reason they keep making Evo heads and it’s not just because the sidewall design is cool.  

That’s not to say one cannot manipulate the feel of the ball regardless of the maximum offset point, but you fight the very nature of the head when you do that. There is a reason you don’t see a ton of midfielders that carry the ball horizontally using heads with natural lower pocket placement, but you see a lot of attackmen that do. Playstyle matters, but so does preference and most of our preferences are shaped by heads we used before, pockets we loved, and where (and how) we play on the field.

So what is your ideal maximum offset point? The easiest way to determine that is to take your three favorite heads and look at where that point is on those. Measure the length of the head from throat to scoop. Now measure where the offset tapers upward towards the scoop (this is also where the face tends to begin to flare out on a really well-made head, but I’m getting ahead of the game). Measure the drop from scoop to and keep those measurements handy for the next step. The return of the lower rail to the scoop is actually just as important as the offset point; they’re intrinsically linked.

OR you can choose just one head and stick with that as your reference point as we move forward. I’m not an engineer and if you are, well, you’re already bored of my pandering anyway and should email me about how to make this project into a reality. 

Part of the reason we’re doing this is to get more familiar with one of the most important pieces of equipment in your gear bag, but more importantly, we want to explore the preferences so you can make a better choice for your next head. Maybe you THINK you love a high pocket, but that’s just because you have one jammed into an ECD DNA. Personal preference comes from personal reference.  

My reference point here is going to be a bit weird. I’ve got a Maverik Centrik U, an ECD Rebel O, and a Warrior Evo 4 sitting in front of me and I want to combine all three of their offset points for the goldilocks measurement…but in terms of picking one for this exercise (and because I forgot my tape measure in my car), I’m going to go with the Centrik. I mean, I have three of them - it’s clearly my favorite depth point, even if I slightly prefer the smooth return of the Rebel O and the Evo 4. That being said, I will definitely NOT be choosing those sickly skinny circular stringing holes or that triangle ridge on the Centrik for the stringing portion of this design process. Like the companies themselves, we learn and we adapt. Or we wait for someone else to do it and then copy them. Like a normal business does.

The difference is that we’re not designing for a brand here, we’re doing it for ourselves. (By the way: You’re the lacrosse player - you are the brand.) By applying these basic concepts - and trust me we are about as basic as avocado toast and “Friends” hot takes right now - we can break down and analyze the things we value in our own equipment. So, make sure to jot down your offset point preference and store it in your notes app, or leave it in the comments below.

Come back next week for the dreaded face shape debate because…I have thoughts and they will not be popular.