How To String A Lacrosse Goalie Head: An Illustrated and Video Guide

It’s very important for all goalies to learn how to string a lacrosse goalie head.

You don’t want to be dependent on another player or coach to string a stick for you.

Take the responsibility to learn how to string your own stick and you’ll eventually be able to create a great goalie stick that gives up few rebounds and makes accurate outlet passes.

When it comes to stringing a lacrosse goalie head, there’s more than 1 way to skin that cat. Lots of string doctors have their own method and each serves its purpose.

Below is my illustrated guide on how I like to string my goalie sticks.

Lacrosse Goalie Head Stringing Video Tutorial

Before we start with the illustrated guide to stringing a head, if you’re the type of person who prefers a video tutorial. We got you –

If anything is unclear in that stringing tutorial video, let me know.

How To String A Lacrosse Goalie Head

Step 1: Gather Your Materials

Before starting the stringing process, you assemble all the materials you’ll need.

Here is the checklist –

• Goalie Head – They’re a ton of great options thesedays. Most common and classic is the STX Eclipse 2.
• Goalie Mesh – I prefer 12 Diamond Goalie mesh. Other options are 10 Diamond Goalie Mesh, or 20 Diamond Goalie Mesh. Each comes with its own set of pros and cons so select what works best for you.
• Sidewall Strings
• Shooting Strings
• Scissors or a Knife
• Lighter

If you buy a lacrosse goalie stringing kit from ECD, StringKing, Mesh Dynasty, or another company those kits come with everything you need.

The kit materails are pre-cut but if you’re working off a spool of string I like to precut the sidewall and shooting strings before starting. I think this makes the process go a lot smoother.

A good rule of thumb for the length is run the shooter from the top to the bottom of the head, run it back, and then run it back to the top. So 3 lengths of the head total is a good length to work with.

Step 2: Spread Open the Mesh Holes

Using your hands grab either side of the mesh and spread open the mesh holes. Do this for the entire piece of mesh, from the top to the bottom.

Mesh should be nice and loose, all the way down.

Step 3: Fold the top 2 rows of diamonds together

Fold the top 2 rows of diamonds together as noted in the picture below.

Place mesh against the stick so the rough side of mesh will be touching the ball. Smooth side of the mesh goes on the back of stick.

Step 4: String Top Lace Starting with Center

1. Fold top lace in half and put two ends together
2. Take the two ends and placed them through the center hole of the mesh
3. Go through the top center hole of the goalie head with both pieces entering from the front side of the head.
4. Then take both ends and pull them back through the loop of the top string. 
5. Make sure the mesh and knot are nice and centered and then pull this part tight to form your first knot 

Step 5: String Top Lace Starting working your way out from the center

Next we’ll continue to string the top working our way out from the center to one side. Here’s the steps to string each hole.

1. Take the lace and go through the back of the next hole on stick 
2. Pull that lace through the mesh hole 
3. Pull the knot tight 
4. Go through the same mesh hole and then back through same goalie head hole entering on front side.
5. Pull string through the loop created and pull it tight 
6. As you work your way out, continue to pull the knots tight 

Repeat this process until all holes along the top of the goalie head are strung. Remember: work your way out from the center.

Step 6: Secure top corners

Now we should have all of the top goalie head holes string like so: 

Our next step is secure the corners which is very important so that the ball doesn’t hit the plastic when you throw. This causes erratic outlet passes.

1. Place top string through end mesh hole and then through the goalie head hole as seen in the picture below. Pull it tight.  
2. Take the corner piece of mesh, loop it over the stick head, come down with the string and go through the goalie mesh hole. 
3. Pull it back through the next lowest hole on the goalie head making sure its very tight. 
4. Now tie a tight know, and then another knot (double knot) to ensure the string won’t pull through the hole. 
5. Repeat on the other side

Step 7: String the Sidewalls

With the top of the stick now complete, we’ll start to string our sidewalls.

1. Start by double knotting your sidewall string and pulling tight through first goalie sidewall hole. Knot is on the outside of the head.
2. Next we’ll put the end of the of the sidewall string through the mesh hole and pull sidewall string through the next lowest goalie head hole.

1. Then take end of string and place through next lowest goalie mesh hole 
2. While stretching the mesh downwards, we’ll pull our new know tight against the sidewall 
3. Continue this process all the way down the stick. For the 1st 3 sidewall holes pull it extremely tight, then for the remaining sidewall holes you can pull tight but not extreme. This will help create a nice pocket.
4. Once we’re out of sidewall holes, place the string through the next lowest goalie mesh hole and then again through the next lowest goalie mesh hole below that one 
5. Place string through top hole of next of goalie head as seen in the pic below 
6. Pull it tight and then tie it off with a double knot.
7. Repeat the same process on the other side.

This is what our sidewalls should look like: 

Step 8: Form the channel with a ball

Once sidewall sides are complete, we’ll take a lacrosse ball and start forming the pocket. Bang the ball into the pocket to loosen up the mesh.

Do this up and down the pocket on the front side and then flip the stick over and repeat on the back side.

Step 9: String Bottom of the Stick

Here are the steps to string the bottom of the mesh to the stick. We’ll use a shooting string to accomplish this step.

1. With the shooting string we’ll go through bottom hole below were our shooting strings are and then up through the throat. Tie off the end with a double knot.  
2. In the goalie mesh, enter the shooting string into hole you used last on the sidewall string.
3. Then do a traditional weave all the way across 
4. Put shooting string back through throat hole and then bottom hole, essentially reserving item 1 of this step. Wait to tie off this string until we add the twist knot described below.

This is what it should look like: 

Next we’ll add a custom twist knot. We’ll use a sidewall string for this step.

1. Enter shooting string into very bottom hole, tie it off with a double know and pull it tight 
2. Now enter sidewall string into the same hole that the shooting string is in. It’s going to be a tight fit and you’ll probably need to use a knife to get the sidewall string all the way through 
3. Find center 3 diamonds and bring sidewall string through. Start a weave only on the center 3 holes.   
4. Next, loop end of string around to do a little weave. You can do this twice if you want, I’ll stick with just one.  
5. Next we’ll go back through the other hole where our shooting string is and out the very bottom hole, essentially reserving item 1.
6. Before tying off the strings, punch the pocket out to get a nice deep pocket.
7. Now tie off the shooting string and then tie off the sidewall string, both with double knots

Here’s our end result at this point: 

Step 10: Add Shooting Strings

There’s lots of options for the design of shooting strings. Essentially these strings function to keep the top of the mesh stiff to aid in throwing.

The design I like to use consists to a top sidewall string and two traditional shooting strings below: 

1. First put string through sidewall and then weave the string through the mesh 
2. Find same sidewall hole on opposite side of the stick and put string through.
3. Weave string back across and pull nice and tight 
4. Tie off the string with a double knot.
5. Repeat for each shooting string you want in your stick. As you go lower the laces should be less tight. The tightest string is on the top otherwise your stick will have some nasty whip and won’t throw right.

Step 11: Snip and Burn

Our stick stringing is just about complete. The final step is cut all extra string from our sidewall and shooting strings. For each end that you cut use a lighter to burn the edges so that the strings never fray.

Here is our final product:

Videos on How To String A Lacrosse Goalie Head

If you prefer to learn how to string your lacrosse goalie head by watching a video, there are several good ones from YouTube that demonstrate the stick stringing technique I’ve described above.

Stringing Top

Stringing Sidewalls

Stringing Shooting Strings

Conclusion

Learning how to string a lacrosse goalie head is something I recommend every goalie take time to learn.

Keep in mind there are many different ways to string a goalie stick. If you’re interested in a more advanced technique, check out the quad sidewall.

However you can accomplish the basic stringing of a goalie head by following the step-by-step illustrated guide I’ve put together in this post.

Now you’ll just have work on your save technique cause there’s no blaming the stick.

Until next time! Coach Damon | LaxGoalieRat.com

Any part of this tutorial confusing or doesn’t make sense? Ask me questions in the comments.  

Inside the Lax Goalie Rat Academy there are 4 different tutorial videos on how to string up different heads with different meshes and different patterns.