A school team’s name on a lacrosse handle.

Warrior Sports was founded in 1992 by David Morrow, a former lacrosse player, according to English Wikipedia and to the company’s own boilerplate, which the National Lacrosse League reprinted when it announced a partnership with the brand in December 2016. Wikipedia says the name comes from Morrow’s time with the Brother Rice Warriors, a lacrosse team in Birmingham, Michigan. The company kept that school-team name as its own.

The company began with a lacrosse shaft, the handle to which the head of the stick is fitted. Wikipedia says Warrior began by making titanium lacrosse shafts, and that Morrow used the shaft while playing for the Princeton Tigers lacrosse team. The company describes its range today as equipment, footwear and apparel for lacrosse and hockey players.

From lacrosse the company moved onto the ice. Wikipedia says Warrior entered the ice hockey business in 2005 by acquiring Innovative Hockey, a California-based manufacturer, and that it now makes hockey skates, sticks, helmets, gloves, goalie masks and other gear as well as lacrosse equipment. In 2007, the company says, it acquired Brine Sporting Goods of Boston; Brine’s website today carries Warrior’s company information. Wikipedia records that Warrior entered the ice skate market in July 2025 with its Alpha Pro skate.

Wikipedia gives its base as Warren, Michigan; the company’s current “About Warrior” text and its later league boilerplate give Shelby Township, Michigan, as its headquarters.

New Balance, Liverpool and a return to hockey and lacrosse.

In February 2004, the company says, Warrior was acquired by the privately held New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.; Wikipedia records that New Balance obtained a controlling interest that year, and City A.M. reported in 2015 that Boston-based New Balance had bought Warrior Sports in 2004. Since then Warrior has operated as a New Balance brand. Wikipedia notes that the Warrior Ice Arena — the practice rink of the Boston Bruins, built as part of the Boston Landing development — is owned by New Balance and carries the Warrior name.

Wikipedia says Warrior moved into the sport in 2012, producing kits and training equipment for clubs, and that on 18 January 2012 Liverpool and Warrior Sports announced a deal making Warrior the club’s kit supplier from 1 June 2012. The new home kits were launched on Liverpool’s website on 11 May 2012, with a simplified club badge, Wikipedia records, and the away kit for the 2013–14 season followed on 5 June 2013.

The arrangement changed shape three years later. City A.M. reported on 5 February 2015 that New Balance would take over as Liverpool’s official kit manufacturer from the following season, continuing the six-year deal the club had struck with its subsidiary Warrior in 2012, and that the “NB” logo would replace the “W” on the red shirt. Wikipedia says that as New Balance entered the global football market, clubs and players sponsored by Warrior moved to New Balance, and Warrior went back to hockey and lacrosse. City A.M. added that New Balance had launched its new football brand in London the evening before its report.

Lacrosse partnerships continued alongside. The National Lacrosse League announced a three-year partnership with Warrior Sports and New Balance on 15 December 2016, and later reprinted Warrior’s company description, with its Shelby Township address, in a later announcement renewing the relationship. Wikipedia describes Warrior as a founding factor in Major League Lacrosse and a sponsor of all its teams.

Design and documentation.

Protective and playing equipment gives a logo very little room and a great deal to compete with. A helmet is curved in two directions, carries vents, clips and face guards, and may also have to hold a team’s own crest, numbers and stripes. A stick or shaft is long and narrow, so a name usually runs along its length and is read sideways, often from across a field or a rink. A skate boot offers a heel, a tongue and a quarter panel, each seen from a different angle, while a ball is round, scuffed and spinning, and its print is broken up by panels and seams.

Brands working on these surfaces tend to lean on a short word or a simple symbol that survives being stretched, shrunk, repeated or partly hidden. Colour matters too: a mark has to read against team colours it does not control, under floodlights and on television.

Each guide that follows sets out who started the brand, who has owned it since, and how its name and mark have appeared on equipment, separating what independent sources record from what a company says about itself.

A school-team name and a single letter.

The Warrior identity is built on a name with a specific origin. Wikipedia traces it to Morrow’s school lacrosse team, the Brother Rice Warriors, so the brand took its name from a team before it had any products to carry it. The same word now appears on lacrosse shafts and heads, hockey sticks and skates, and the arena in Boston that bears it.

The other half of the identity is a single letter. City A.M.’s 2015 report described the mark on Liverpool’s shirts simply as the “W”, which New Balance’s “NB” logo was set to replace when the parent company took over the club’s kit. The letter appeared on Liverpool’s kits from the 2012 launch until the New Balance changeover.

Ownership shapes the way the brand sits in the market. Warrior is one of the brands of New Balance, which has owned it since 2004 and which, Wikipedia says, entered football in 2015 in its own name rather than under Warrior’s. Wikipedia records that Warrior returned to hockey and lacrosse after that change.

Those two sports define the range. Lacrosse is where the company began with its titanium shafts in 1992, and ice hockey is the sport it entered through the 2005 purchase of Innovative Hockey; the name also stands over an ice rink, since Wikipedia says the Warrior Ice Arena serves as the Boston Bruins’ practice facility and has been the home arena of the Boston Pride of the National Women’s Hockey League.

The lacrosse connection has been renewed through league partnerships. The National Lacrosse League’s 2016 announcement and its later renewal each carried Warrior’s own company description, naming Morrow as founder and 1992 as the founding year.

For a design guide, Warrior Sports shows how a school team’s name and a single initial can hold a brand together across two ice and field sports and a short spell in football. Compare it with New Balance, its owner since 2004, and Bauer Hockey, another name in hockey equipment. For this guide we use warpaint red, shaft black and titanium grey with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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