‘A remarkable reminder’: How Connor Fields’ stick keeps his family close

Whenever Connor Fields steps on the field, he carries a piece of his family with him.

His brother, Peter, has been stringing his sticks since they were teenagers. His wife, Lara, dyes the heads of his sticks.

“It reminds me throughout the games of the people who I do it for,” Fields said. “I just look down at my stick [and see] all those people who are in my corner.”

Fields and his brother both learned to string sticks in middle school, with differing degrees of success. While Peter had a knack for the nuances of it, Connor was less proficient.

“For some reason, whenever I strung, they turned out like a tennis racket, with no pocket,” Fields said, laughing.

So, from then on out, Peter strung Connor’s sticks and continues to today, even while in fellowship and residency in Rochester over the last few years. Before each season, Connor drops off a pair of freshly dyed heads for Peter to string up.

Over the years, Peter has mastered how Connor likes his sticks strung.

“He’s got it down to a science,” Connor said. “He could string it up and throw it against the wall or shoot with it and know.”

Fields likes to feel the ball come off the top of the head a little bit. He also favors a mid pocket. Both are stringing preferences he’s learned to communicate to Peter over the years despite not having an in-depth knowledge of the technical side of stick stringing.

“Those are things he kind of taught me how to verbalize,” Connor explained. “Now, he knows exactly how it is. By the time he gets it to me, usually, they don’t need any changes.”

Having someone else string his sticks is a relief for Fields. He knows he can trust his stick to do what he wants it to. Especially when he wishes he was playing better, he knows it’s not the stick that needs to be dialed in.

“If a stick isn’t working for me one week, I know it’s not the stick,” he said. “Because the sticks work. … I don’t need to fix my stick. I need to get to a field more this week and shoot more with it this week. That’s my mindset, more reps rather than changing the stick.”

Fields’ mom, Jennifer, dyed his sticks from middle school through college as he dominated at Bishop-Timon St. Jude in Buffalo and then at UAlbany. He’s always played with ornately dyed heads ranging from digital camo purple and yellow designs when he played for the Great Danes to blue and orange marble spray ones with the Utah Archers.

Since he and Lara moved in together and got married, she’s taken up the dyeing. Similar to how Connor defers to Peter for the stringing, he lets her control the colors and designs for the dyes.

“She has pretty much the majority input in that,” he said with a chuckle. “She usually picks some colors that she thinks would go well together.”

Having his stick personalized and pieced together by his family helps ground Fields when he’s playing. Especially while traveling and being away from his wife and young son, he has something that keeps them close to his thoughts.

“I’m so thankful to be able to play,” he said. “But it’s not easy to be traveling every weekend for my family, especially for my wife with our son at home. It reminds me I’m away from them, so I better give it everything I got.”