If you got to know me better (something I hope we’ll do, just the two of us over a desert wine and some foie gras), you’d know my favorite head EVER is the Warrior Evo Pro X6. Sorry high school players, it’s the only thing I’ll play with when the game is worth winning. For my money, it’s the best head for a dodging attackman on the market.

However, after playing NDNU last weekend with Barbary Coast, I thought I had isolated the cause of an endemic problem in the game of lacrosse: head rattle.

My collection of Warrior Evo Pro X6s. Unfortunately, this is all of them.

Mom, where does rattle come from?

After the game, I noticed my newest X6 (2nd from the left) was rattling more than usual. I looked down to see it was now broken in the exact same spot as my gamer, which I purchased the day the X6 came out (2nd from the right). I’d been taping underneath my gamer for almost two years because of this break, and I thought I’d just discovered why.

The problem seemed to be this eight-sided, quarter-inch deep cutout in the top of the throat.

As the title of this post suggests, I’ve always had trouble getting my lacrosse shafts to actually fit all the way inside my favorite stick. I’d never managed to get either of my gamers, one on an old DeBeer titanium Triax, the other on an even older Warrior Krypto Pro, to fit all the way into that quarter-inch cutout. My two gamers shared this trait, and now they share this identical break that causes some serious head rattle. Naturally I assumed they must be related.

I call this photo "Crying Over Spilled Milk"

It doesn’t seem like much, but this really makes both of my sticks rattle without tape. This break was the catalyst for my “Quarter-inch Cutout Hypothesis,” that if this cutout wasn’t shaped just perfectly, it would prevent some shafts from fitting correctly, compromising the structural integrity of the whole setup. I was forced to the scientific method. My sample size was just large enough.

Gamer Gap.

Backup Gap.

It’s been a frustrating two years. I’ve tried everything. I even brought them to the Blisworks Bikes in Davis to try my hand with some heavier tools.

My rainbow head is the same way, and it’s on a Warrior Dolomite. All of these shafts overlap with the cutout in the back.

So I was 0/3 on shafts fitting in the Evo’s cutout (0/2 on Warrior shafts), and 2/3 were now broken sticks, and I get the feeling that’s only because I never play with the rainbow one. I had one head left, the traddie, and luckily the gentlemen over at Epoch Lacrosse sent me their brand new Dragonfly C30 recently, so I thought I’d give modern shaft technology a try.

THIS is what I found.

THE DRAGONFLY C30 FITS PERFECTLY!

This debunks my theory! Clearly not all shafts were created equal. It’s just as likely my problem was caused by variation in my shafts as it was by variation in my heads. All the insane things I’ve heard about how awesome this new composite material is aside, I might switch my game shaft to the Dragonfly for the immediate future just because of this. And I haven’t even gotten to play with the thing yet. So are my 3 shafts too old to fit a modern head, or is the Evo Pro X6′s quarter-inch cutout the real culprit? Tell us what you think!

Speaking of playing with the thing, I will bring you guys THE FIRST product review of this carbon fiber shaft this weekend, from the UC Davis Lacrosse alumni game. It’s gonna be Epoch.

Epoch Lacrosse puts out a mean lookin' box.