face masks, thick like the bars on a football helmet and also offer a wider range of vision than a hockey mask. Field helmets do little to protect the throat region. Hockey mask padding can be formed to the users head for comfort. Are very easy to remove quickly and are molded especially for shock absorption. Also, despite cutting down the range of vision of the user, actively protects the throat area from straight on shots. In recent years, baseball catcher-style masks have been offered as a medium between the two helmet types. At the minor level, most goalies have to wear throat guards or "cow catchers" that attach to the helmet to provide additional coverage for the throat and neck area. Leg guards Lacrosse leg guards or "irons" have taken a massive evolution since the early days of the sport. Early goaltenders wore cricket pads made from thin but rigid padding and a thick cloth material. Eventually these evolved into a cross between cricket and baseball catcher's leg guard. Like cricket, the irons covered high above the knee, while having an exoskeleton of molded plastic caps and shin plates to deflect shots and leave less or no bruising like in baseball. In the 2000s and 2010s, the size rules for these pads were very much tested as a market emerged for new lacrosse goalie equipment. Irons grew in width until it was arguable that they were no longer designed to protect the shin, but largely to cover more net. Eventually there was a push back, the Canadian Lacrosse Association and its partners set limitations on shin guard wideness. Uppers and pants Up until about 2005, the distribution and price of lacrosse style upper pads were extremely inhibitive. Until then, goaltenders generally engaged in "building up". Building up was a common practice, a goalie would buy a set of hockey uppers and add to them. Hockey uppers generally do not have enough padding to protect from downward shots or from up-bounces from bounce shots, so materials and other pieces of equipment were often added to protect from these, including: Football lineman shoulder pads, hockey shoulder pads, kidney guards, baseball belly guards, sectioned PVC piping (also used in old lacrosse slash guards), and thick cuts of foam. These augmentations were added not only to increase the upper body size of the goalie, but to increase their safety, comfort, but had to