People First, Shared Hands: Honoring Chinese New Year and Strategic’s Partners and Suppliers with Gratitude

As Chinese New Year approaches, Strategic Sports also marks an important milestone: 30 years as the ‘Helmetry Specialists for the World’. We welcome the Year of the Fire Horse as a one defined by momentum, clarity, and progress, driven by purposeful action, innovation, and collaboration that delivers lasting results.

For Strategic Sports, collaboration goes beyond engineering breakthroughs or manufacturing excellence. We’re talking about people. Our ‘People First’ value is often associated with the dedicated teams inside our factories and offices, but it extends well beyond our walls to the partners and suppliers who have supported Strategic Sports throughout our journey.

As we reflect on three decades of growth, we wanted to pause and recognize those relationships in a more personal way. This year, we are sharing a small token of appreciation with key partners and suppliers, handcrafted pottery created by Galen Leonhardy, founder of The Little Hidden Pottery Studio and a lifelong friend of Strategic Sports Managing Director Norman Cheng.

Each piece is intentionally simple and functional, shaped by hand from local earth and finished with care. Much like the work we do at Strategic Sports, these objects transform common materials into something meaningful and useful through skill, patience, and purpose.

Included with each piece is a personal note from Cheng, sharing the story behind the pottery and the person who made it. It is a reminder that progress is built not just through systems and technology, but through people, shared values, and mutual respect.

As we embark upon the Year of the Fire Horse, we do so with gratitude for the hands, minds, and partnerships that continue to move Strategic Sports forward. Together, we remain committed to our mission of Protecting Life, guided by People First, Innovation, and Professionalism.

A Letter from Norman Cheng, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Strategic Sports

I have known Galen Leonhardy for most of my life. Since grade school, I have called him Friend.

After graduating from high school, he joined the U.S. Marines, and the world called him Soldier. While serving off the coast of Lebanon, he heard the explosion that killed many of his friends and fellow soldiers. After returning to the United States, he was honorably discharged. The loss of his friends led him to question the purpose of their sacrifice and the rationale behind American intervention in foreign countries.

He enrolled in college and began protesting what he felt was an overreach of American foreign policy. He was arrested. Some called him Protester.

After graduation, he became a professor in a rural town in the American Midwest, working to reach young people and encourage them to question their place and contribution to society. His students call him Teacher.

In his time off, Galen gathers earth from nearby land and forms pottery. He takes what we might simply call mud and shapes it into items useful for everyday life. Through this process, he finds peace and achieves a sense of Zen.

I have long admired Galen’s dedication to finding his place in society, and I wanted to share his pottery with my friends and partners. As you enjoy these mugs, whether with coffee or tea, I hope you will reflect on how together, you and I continue Strategic Sports’ mission of Protecting Life through our core values of People First, Innovation, and Professionalism.

Galen has held many titles throughout his life. Through his work, he reminds us how common materials, shaped with care and intention, can become products that have a meaningful impact on a user’s life.

Happy New Year!

Norman Cheng

About The Little Hidden Pottery Studio:

Galen brings a lifetime of reflection, discipline, and craftsmanship to every ceramic piece. Born in Boulder, Colorado and raised in Washington’s rolling Palouse hills, Galen’s journey began with military service in the U.S. Marine Corps, including a life-altering experience during the 1983 Beirut bombing. That profound moment sparked a path toward peace, leading him from military life into Idaho's Frank Church wilderness, then into Buddhist monastic life, and eventually to a career in education.

Now based in Moline, Illinois, Galen is a longtime professor and martial artist, and potter whose work in clay is both meditative and intentional—each vessel a quiet conversation between hand, earth, and spirit. Using food-safe Laguna clay sourced from Ohio, Galen creates pottery that’s meant to be held, used, and appreciated in everyday life. His studio is a hidden space where mindfulness and form meet—one small pot at a time.