Sidewall Jedi Lars Keil 'The Chosen One' to String Sticks

When Trevor Baptiste and TD Ierlan lined up across the stripe from each other for the opening faceoff of the 2021 Premier Lacrosse League All-Star Game, they were linked by another thread besides their sensational play that season.

They both used sticks strung by the same person. And they were far from the only ones who did so at PayPal Park. When the man behind many of your favorite pros’ pockets wasn’t tending to equipment issues, he toed the 50-yard line lest to give the impression he was leaning one way or the other.

His name is Lars Keil — aka the Sidewall Jedi.

“I really do think he is the best stringer there is out there,” said Maryland Whipsnakes faceoff specialist Joe Nardella.

Though Nardella’s Defenders fell to the Adversaries 23-21, the entire All-Star Game felt like a win for Team Unfair Advantage. That’s the title Keil created for those he strings for from the youth level to pros to 60-year-olds, and applies to anyone who plays with a stick strung “markedly” better than their competition.

Amongst the Team Unfair Advantage members who shined that day were Tim Troutner, who was named All-Star Game MVP after making 24 saves and scoring a behind-the-back goal with a goalie crosse. Jake Froccaro came out on top in the fastest shot competition using a Maverik Kinetik 2.0 with ECD Hero 3 mesh he borrowed from Keil, who strung it the previous weekend specifically for his own personal record attempt (he hit 101 mph). Rob Pannell registered eight points, including a pair of 2-point goals. Keil strung up a Warrior Evo QX-O for the all-time leading scorer in U.S. Men’s National Team history less than 48 hours earlier.

“Dude, I need some new sticks,” Pannell messaged Keil. “I’m in my own head right now.”

The confidence Keil has in his craft helps even the best players in the world get out of their heads. His current client roster includes college stars Owen Duffy, Sam King and Joey Spallina and pro luminaries like Grant Ament, Tom Schreiber and Michael Sowers. Several women’s players also enlist Keil’s services. More than a hundred players pop up on his spreadsheet.

“He knows every single thing possible about stringing sticks,” former Boston Cannons goalie Nick Marrocco said. “It makes a big difference when you get out on the field. You see it all the time. Some games, you have guys sailing the ball or shooting it into the dirt. Being able to go out and play and not worry about that is huge.”

A self-described stick stringing nerd, Keil talks about all facets of lacrosse with the fervor of someone who has centered his life around the sport. Currently a director with Massachusetts Youth Lacrosse, he previously spent four years as the director of lacrosse operations at Harvard and eight years as a college coach at various stops in Division I, II and III men’s and wom-en’s lacrosse. He considers himself lucky that his passion for stringing is so intertwined with helping players achieve their potential. He’s on a mission to bring to light the underutilized and undervalued aspect of high-performance string-ing. He believes everyone can, and should, have a great stick. He estimates that the “vast majority” of the current playing population does not.

“There’s never a shortage of lacrosse play-ers playing with sticks that are holding them back,” Keil said during a three-hour Zoom interview in transit. He watched a bald eagle fly over I-90 West while he drove from Massachusetts to Skaneateles, N.Y. An Epoch Z-Three head he strung with Warrior Warp Mesh on an Instagram Live hosted by HersheyLaxDyes the previous night rode shotgun in his pickup truck.

Keil’s path to becoming the most trusted resource on all things string in this galaxy was somewhat circuitous. He didn’t start playing lacrosse until his junior year on Andover High School’s inaugural varsity team in 1999. Early in the spring semester of his freshman year at Springfield College, coach Keith Bugbee informed him his skills were not at a level that he’d get to play in practice, let alone games. He told Keil he wouldn’t hold it against him if he to quit. “What immediately came out of my mouth was, ‘I’m stay-ing,’ and what went through my head you’re not allowed  to print,” said Keil, who has  a shaved head and  hearty  laugh.

Keil played in almost all the Pride's league games that year. They sported the the highest scoring offense in the nation.

By his junior year, Keil was a starter. He seems to delight in upending and exceeding people’s expectations — a trait that carries over into his stringing. He finds it hilarious when people tell him you can’t have a deep, high pocket that also throws easily. “You absolutely can,” he said.

Keil majored in educational leadership and administration at Springfield, though for a while, he thought he might go to art school. He fell in love with drawing comic book covers and characters after an assignment in the fifth grade.

The more Keil focused on stringing, especially after he graduated college, the less he dabbled in visual arts. 

“My artistic expression became the sticks that I strung,” he said.

Back at Springfield, he’d scavenge mesh out of teammates’ broken heads and then experiment on his backup Warrior Evo with busted a sidewall hole. The entirety of his supplies fit into a Nike shoebox.

Now, his “dojo” consumes the entirety of the retrofitted basement office at his home in Andover from where he strings and packages the heads that he’ll ship across the country. Every type of men’s and women’s head imaginable with seemingly endless varieties of stringing covers a black pegboard on one wall next to the pair of Brine gloves Keil wore at Springfield. He converted a storage closest near the locker room at Harvard into a second workspace.

The setup of Nardella’s sticks used to frequently be a point of frustration. They’d work for one game, but then the head would warp, or the mesh would loosen. Awry passes followed. That was before he started working with Keil at Harvard in 2018. While watching film of the previous MLL season, Keil noticed how the ball frequently would get caught in the back of his head.

“There’s a better way to string your sticks,” he told Nardella.

Keil started stringing to the outside of the sidewall, one of many techniques he’s popularized. Nardella has never had the same problem. A higher pocket with tighter sidewalls and an easier release gave him greater confidence off the ground and moving the ball in transition.

Faceoff specialists are Keil’s most frequent clients because of the wear and tear of the position. Nardella typically brings three to four STX Duel Reflexes to every PLL tour stop. Keil strings him a new one every week of the regular season to add to the quiver. “My bag is getting a little full,” Nardella said.

Keil chronicles his latest creations on his Instagram (@Lukesidewallker) channel and is an active member of the stringing community. His iCloud account contains more than 33,000 photos. More than 20,000 of them are of lacrosse sticks. His Instagram stories are filled with responses to “Ask Me Anything” and before-and-after shots of people applying his pocket pounding method to stretch every single hole of mesh. It involves a baseball bat — the best use he’s ever found for one.

Followers often ask how quickly he can string a stick. The answer varies. He can weave one of Nardella’s pockets in about 12 minutes because he’s done it so many times. Speed, however, is never the primary focus. Performance is. As long as it takes to make it “absolutely awesome,” Keil likes to reply.

The best promotion, though, is often word of mouth. In the case of stringing, seeing, or rather feeling, often results in believing.

“We need you,” then-Virginia offensive coordinator Sean Kirwan texted Keil in the fall of 2017. “When can you come here?”

Kirwan had witnessed Keil’s impact up close in 2016 when they worked together at Brown during the Bears’ final four run. After Keil spent a season in Durham with the Duke women’s lacrosse team, he returned to Massachusetts, where he officially established Sidewall Jedi stringing and consulting.

“If there’s one person you should ever listen to about stick stringing, this is the guy,” Lars Tiffany said when he introduced Keil to the Cavaliers.

Keil strung seven or eight sticks as “testers” with a range of pockets that he then doled out at practice the next day. Anyone interested in getting a stick also filled out a Google Form listing their preferences. By practice the next day, Keil had the dozens of bespoke orders ready — crafted with each players’ mechanics in mind.

Three-quarters of the team used sticks strung by Keil when the Cavaliers won the 2019 NCAA title.

“I want to create raving fans,” Keil said. “I want them to be so impacted by their performance that they’re going to go out of their way to tell everyone they ever have come in contact with that I’m the person that they should talk to about stringing every stick for the rest of their lives.”

Keil’s own driving force can be distilled down into four words. The phrase, in Latin and English, adorns his Twitter bio, website, email signature and every wristband he includes in the packages to customers with their strung heads.

Ut Ceteri Iacere Possint. So Others May Throw.

He adopted the saying from the U.S. Coast Guard’s motto, “So Others May Live.”

Though Keil started out stringing looking for a way to help himself, then a way to supplement his coaching income, he now calls it cathartic. He wants to give players something that will help them progress and spark a love for the game that he found a little more than 20 years ago.