In all sports, sporting equipment tends to follow a trend of increasingly better products being released from different companies. These products push the envelope, forcing every other company to one-up each other to make a better product. Lacrosse mesh represents the epitome of capitalism, and as the wax mesh trend fades out and better synthetic meshes come to light, East Coast Dyes followed with their release of Hero Mesh.
Hero Mesh is the newest, non-wax, mesh from ECD. The selling points are that it is weatherproof (not waterproof), lightweight, responsive, and made with HyperWeavetm which creates a uniform diamond length for maximum control and feel.
When I first strung up Hero Mesh with Hero Strings, I used a similar pattern that Greg used in his Hero Mesh live stringing in a Brine Clutch III HS. I used this pattern with other meshes before and I liked it, so I stuck with it. When I finished stringing the head, shooting strings included, I thought it would have a ton of hook and whip. But I trusted Greg and, without adjustment, I went out to shoot around. Almost immediately, I fell in love with the mesh. I had never had this much feel in a stick before and the amount of hold blew me away. Even my teammates who picked up my stick were amazed with how much hold there was but it was still so consistent.
Hero Mesh’s only downfall is that in heavy rain, and I mean heavy, the mesh can become a little slick and the pocket, less defined. So all those toe drags I was doing the day before where not as easy to do. Another thing to note: I didn’t take care of my stick after this practice, I left it in my car. The next day, the pocket was totally fine, so the maintenance for this mesh is actually really easy.
I’ve been using this piece of Hero Mesh for well over a month. Those of you who live in Maryland know that a Maryland fall really means freezing rain, warm and sunny, bitter cold, and light rain all in one week. This mesh has gone through it all. After all this time I noticed I have never made the excuse “It’s my stick” or “It’s the rain.” All of my passes have been pinpoint from the day I started using it. Aside from the occasional greasy ball at practice, shooting was never a problem with the mesh and I always knew where it was releasing because of the feel.
East Coast Dyes has brought something to the table of meshes that will be heavily competed with. It sets itself apart from everyone else in every way you could think and the striker patterns can give a subtle flare to any stick. A Hero Mesh complete kit comes in at $30.00 on their website and a single piece is $20.00.
The pattern is…
Nine diamond Mainely Mesh topstring starting on the second hole
Starting on the fourth hole: Tie, skip, skip, knot, skip, knot, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, skip, skip, tie off on the last hole. Throat string goes on the last nine diamond row.
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