ARS Sport Goalie Bag - Long Term Review

[ZeroGravitas]

Welcome to my review of my ARS Sport goalie bag. This review is 9 years in the making!

I bought this bag from ARS Sport in March of 2011. I first heard of this company on the GSBB and was in need of a heavy duty bag, so I pulled the trigger. I'm not familiar with today's ordering process, but I dealt with ARS entirely through e-mail back in 2011.

The Warrior and True goalie bags that are sold nowadays in retail stores look almost exactly the same as these. I wouldn't be surprised at all if ARS Sport is the company that is actually making them.

The basic goalie bag is pretty plain, just a bag, with no internal pockets or features - not even a separate pocket for skates or clothing. If you want any features, they cost extra. They offer options like adding an internal pocket(s), name embroidery, ID window, two color straps, mesh on top of the bag for ventilation and a custom logo. These days, they appear to have more custom options available on their website's customizer, including outside pockets and velcro closure for the straps. Below is an example of the custom work they can do.

I requested a plain black goalie bag with one pocket on the side (for skates), no mesh, no embroidery, no logo. The bag is 40x20x20 - standard goalie bag size. It took approximately two weeks for it to be built and shipped to me from Montreal to California via UPS. It cost less than $100 USD shipped.

Below is a picture of the bag today, fully loaded with all my gear - except my leg pads - which I have never tried fitting in here. For reference, all my gear is adult large or medium. Contents of the bag include skates, a bunch of jerseys, goalie pants and jock, catcher, blocker, chest protector, mask in mask bag, skate mat, knee pads, and a gym sack with body wash and shower slippers.

The bag is built out of polyvinyl so it has been really durable.

There's only been a couple locations of wear. You can see above that some of the stitching as come off of one of the straps.

You can also see that some of the piping is coming off the bag. It's relatively minor.

There is a lot of wear on the side of the bag. The internal picture shows a lot of white dots - those dots are actually small holes that aren't much bigger than a small pebble. It was really sunny here in southern California so the image is washed out.

But considering I've been using this bag for 9 years, including my time at university where I was skating 3-4 times a week, this bag has held up splendidly. These vinyl bags are ultradurable and waterproof. I would not be surprised if a regular nylon bag would have been destroyed after 1-2 years of my abusive usage.

TL;DR - Nice, barebones bag that has lasted forever. But might not be worth taking a look at if you can get a Warrior bag on sale at your local shop.

 

[RichMan]

I find that the bags made of similar material but with a shine finish tends to break down more rapidly. Been a while since I've heard about ARS, and GSBB for that matter