This Head Sucks: The Warrior Stiffi
"Hey, mommy - what does Stiffi mean?"
Welcome to “This Head Sucks”, a series on the worst lacrosse heads ever made. Friends, you have no idea how easy you have it. The stick you have right next to you, or in your car, is the culmination of decades of research and development. It’s also the result of dozens of experiments that were complete and abject failures the likes of which the lacrosse world will likely never see again. However, those who do not respect their history are doomed to repeat it. So, in that spirit, I am here to educate you on some of the most egregious failures of design, execution, and effort to ever sully our great game.
Today’s pariah is the Warrior Stiffi.
Who is it For: Allegedly designed for defensemen and/or people who love boner jokes, the Stiffi came out at near the height of Warrior’s popularity in the 2007/08 season. It was advertised as the flagship of the next generation of Warrior’s “Titanium” series heads. It retailed for over 130 dollars (or $150.00 factory strung) which was an even more astronomical price then than it would be now. There are so many levels of despicable that this head represents that the price tag is the most overlooked. This was one of the first “super heads” that lacrosse companies tried to push on the public with a gimmick that had, at best, a placebo effect or, at worst, snapped in twain like the patience of an American citizen during a Presidential debate.
What happens first, your current head gets warped or your new metal-infused head shatters and stabs an opponent? The question is moot because one of those things is annoying and the other is actually dangerous. The Stiffi enjoyed a production run that was a season (or three) too long. Which is to say that too many of them were made because it was expected to be an explosive hit when it was actually more like a bunch of firecrackers being set off inside of a garbage can. This head hung around for so many years that they all turned that sickly yellow color that every lacrosse company thinks is cool and calls “bone white” like they’re comparing business cards in “American Psycho”.
Why it Sucks: Oh, besides the fact that the “Stiffi” sounds like a bunch of aggro Mountain Dew Code Red swilling bros on a hang gliding trip created after they completed systematic sexual harassment of every waitress in a lonesome mountain town? Besides that? Well, it’s probably the idiotic idea of placing a U-shaped metal rod in the front of the face of the head. There is a reason that no other company even tried to do this and that reason is related to dangerous breakage. Have you ever seen the kind of cut that can be caused by a broken or cracked metal shaft on bare skin? It is actually horrific.
Back when I was coaching one of my assistants was running a drill where he pushed out ball carriers with a [light] crosscheck. On the last run of the drill, his shaft (a 7075 alloy of unknown origin) snapped and opened up the deltoid muscle of one of our starting defensemen. He left, got stitches, came back to practice...and then we got an earful from his mom and the AD. Lacrosse, by its very nature, is unsafe. That’s why every handle has a sticker on the side of it that has that very phrase on it. But at least the warning is there on the sticker.
Now, imagine placing actual metal (albeit titanium alloy, not some chintzy 7075 aluminum) inside the face of a head that was marketed as the next big thing in lacrosse. In many ways, we should all be thankful that the price and the utility of the Stiffi flopped so aggressively.
One Good Thing: It, uh, was actually pretty rigid? I mean, until it eventually shattered into harmful nylon and metal particles that didn’t turn you into Ironman or require a tetanus shot.
Scale of Trash: Performance-wise, it’s a full-on miss. It’s actually a lot like another Warrior head that had a cult following (see below) which also fails to meet any modern standards for stringability or practical use. However, in terms of nomenclature...there is no more despicable piece of equipment this side of the “Warrior Pinup” shaft.
(Yeah. They made that too. Thankfully, that didn’t sell well either.)
The thing is, it’s less about being “woke” when it comes to the clear and obvious reference here and more about seeing it as unnecessarily crass. One can look back at movies or media from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s and see thousands of examples of questionable innuendo. It’s often dismissed as a byproduct of what was acceptable - or worse “edgy” - at the time. The thing about the Stiffi is that it came out in a time where the sport was really beginning to expand in a meaningful way across the country, so it could have been much more damaging were it to actually be the hit Warrior expected it to be. Calling a sporting goods product the same word that is slang for an erect penis is not only foolhardy by any decade’s standards, but it’s also downright loathsome in retrospect. And yes, I am aware that saying “This head sucks” is tenuously similar in tone, but I’m not selling this product to kids and also do not have millions/any of dollars to spend on marketing experts.
Usability: You could still use a Stiffi today and it probably wouldn’t be horrible if you locked it in a room with a top tier stringer and the promise of gross monetary compensation. Still, the offset is very minimal, the face shape is pedestrian even by the standards at the time, and it has that sharp mid-aughts Warrior scoop that everyone hated. The head was also criticized for being derivative of the Warrior Helix - a head championed by the legendary Ryan Boyle during his time as the Patchouli Prince of Warrior - because it absolutely was. If you put the Helix and the Stiffi side by side they were almost indistinguishable (save for the weirdly circular back sidewall of the Helix). So, wait - the Stiffi is not only low on functionality but it’s also lazy? Yes. Yes, it is.
Overall Rating: The titanium horseshoe technology went on to sully the greatness of the Warrior Evolution line and for that, I shall condemn the Stiffi even further. Not only did the metal infusion stunt the design of the Evolution series for the worse (something that was thankfully corrected with the Evo 4) it doubled down on the Ti-infused technology that no one liked. This head is atrocious, the marketing behind the head is disgusting and I’m thankful that Warrior’s parent company New Balance is dictating their direction as a company away from crap like this.