The List We Actually Use (After 7 Years)
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We were five hours from home when my daughter realized her stick was still in the garage.
Friday afternoon, car loaded, three kids in the back, snacks for the road, hotel booked. We did the usual mental checklist on the way out — uniforms, bags, cleats, chargers. Pulled into the tournament hotel just before 9pm, started unloading, and that was the moment we figured out the stick had never made it out of the garage.
There is no lacrosse store open at 9pm in a random tournament town. There is no teammate who has the right backup. There is just you, your kid, and the very long night of trying to figure out who you can call at 7am Saturday morning.
I will spare you the details of the calls, the texts, and the 6am Saturday morning conversation in a hotel parking lot.
We made it work. A teammate’s family loaned a spare. But that night was the moment I realized the difference between a real tournament weekend packing list and the one I had been winging in my head for years. Seven years and 100+ tournaments later, here’s the list we actually use now.
Want this as a printable PDF you can use every weekend? Grab the free Complete Tournament Packing Checklist here.
Gear — The Stuff You Cannot Forget
This is the section where forgetting one item ruins the weekend. Walk through it twice before you close the trunk.
For girls:
- Stick + backup stick
- Goggles
- Mouthpiece
- Cleats AND turfs (depending on field conditions you may need both)
- Water bottle
- Hair ties and headbands (more on these in a minute — they live in the Handy Bag too)
For boys:
- Stick + backup stick
- Helmet
- Chest pad
- Rib pads (if your son uses them)
- Elbow pads
- Gloves
- Mouthpiece
- Cleats AND turfs
- Water bottle
You know your kid better than I do. Most of this lives in their gear bag year-round. But “I’m sure it’s in there” is exactly how a stick ends up in the garage. Open the bag. Look at every item. Don’t trust the bag.
Uniforms — double and triple check this one. I have personally watched at least three teammates over the years discover Saturday morning at 7am that their uniform never made the trip. There is no fixing this from five hours away. The tears, the yelling, the embarrassment — all completely avoidable with one extra check before you load the car.
Tournament Field Setup — The Stuff That Makes the Weekend Livable
You have your wagon now. (If you don’t, we just had that whole argument.) Here is what should be in it.
Chairs. I held out for years because I am a stander and didn’t want to carry one more thing. I was wrong. There is always a stretch of the long tournament day where you wish you had your own chair. And in between games, the kids want to sit too. Nothing fancy required — just something comfortable that folds up easily.
A small cooler. This is the workhorse of your tournament setup. Bag of ice in there to refill the kids’ water bottles between games. A few extra waters. Your beverage of choice for after the kids’ last game. Tournaments have a way of charging $8 for a Pepsi — bring your own and that adds up over a summer of weekends. (And if you want the full picture of what a club lacrosse season really costs, we broke it down in detail here.)
The Handy Bag. My wife’s invention, and I will publicly admit it has saved us more times than I can count. Inside: bandaids, scissors (for cutting tape off ankles, loose strings off jerseys), chapstick, sunscreen, extra athletic tape, hair ties, headbands, pre-wrap (the girls use it as hairbands too), bobby pins, aspirin, and somehow always one or two random items I never knew were in there until we needed them. Build one. You will not regret it.
Bug spray. Nobody thinks about this until the 6pm game on a summer evening when the gnats find the sideline. Throw a bottle in the wagon and forget about it until you need it.
A portable charger. Long tournament days drain phones fast — especially if you’re filming games, checking schedules, or coordinating with other parents. One power bank in the wagon saves you from the dead-phone scramble at 4pm.
Weather Survival — Pack for the Forecast You Don’t Want
Here’s the thing about tournament weekends — the weather will be exactly the opposite of what’s comfortable. Plan accordingly.
Cold weather:
- Layers to wear under their uniforms
- Extra socks (multiple pairs)
- Warm clothes for between games
- Blankets — we keep at least one in the car year-round
- Hand warmers — these are a small investment that pays off the first 40-degree morning
- For boys: my son and his teammates wear thin rubber gloves (the kind from the doctor’s office) under their lax gloves for added warmth — works better than you’d think
Rainy weather — the worst:
- Umbrella (we keep one in the car always, more when rain is in the forecast)
- Ponchos for everyone, parents included
- Extra clothes for the kids to change into between games
- 2–3 extra pairs of socks minimum
- A shoe dryer back at the hotel — this one is non-negotiable
There is nothing worse than wet equipment after a full day of games sitting in your hotel room. Boys’ pads can air out overnight and mostly recover. Cleats? They are not drying on their own. We were introduced to a small electric shoe dryer by another lax parent years ago and it is one of the best $40 investments we have ever made for tournament life. Dries cleats in about an hour. Works on gloves and pads too.
Hot weather:
- Bigger cooler — ice is gold when it’s 90 degrees and the kids are playing four games
- Extra sunscreen
- Umbrellas double as shade
- A misty fan — we don’t carry one because we don’t have the room, but at every hot tournament one or two of the team families bring them and they are clutch
Parent-Specific Items (Don’t Forget Yourself)
Every packing list focuses on the kids — and they should. But after seven years on tournament sidelines, I can tell you the parents who pack for themselves have a noticeably better weekend than the ones who don’t. A few things you’ll thank me for:
Cash. I am not a cash guy in regular life — I’ll pay for a pack of gum with a card. But somehow at every tournament, cash comes up. Parking lots that are cash-only. A team parent collecting $20 for the coach gift. The vendor whose card reader “isn’t working today.” Throw $40–$60 in your wallet on Friday and you’ll use it.
Sunglasses. You’re going to be standing on a sideline staring at a field for eight hours. Don’t squint your way through it. Bring the good ones.
A hat or visor. Same logic. The sun is going to find you. A hat is the difference between still feeling human at game four and being completely fried.
Comfortable shoes — and a change of shoes. You’re standing or walking on uneven turf and grass for two days. Whatever you’re wearing on day one is going to feel awful by Sunday afternoon. A second pair in the car — even just a slip-on — is the kind of small thing that changes the whole back-half of the weekend.
Your own water bottle. The kids’ cooler isn’t just for them — you’re going to want water all day too. A refillable bottle that lives in the wagon means you’re not buying $4 plastic bottles every two hours from the tournament vendor.
The Hotel — The Other Half of the Weekend
The tournament is half the trip. The hotel is the other half. Pack for it.
The basics, per kid, per night:
- Change of clothes for each day
- Bathing suit (most tournament hotels have a pool — and after a hot day of lacrosse, the pool is going to happen)
- Pajamas
- Toiletries (toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, hair products, contacts/glasses if applicable)
- Phone charger — they did not forget the phone, but if you don’t pack the charger, it might as well not exist
For you:
- A bottle of wine to share with the other tournament parents while the kids run around the hotel hallways like maniacs is, in my honest opinion, not a bad idea. (That’s a whole other blog coming.)
Gear deodorizer. If you have a boy in lacrosse, you already know. Pads, gloves, and a helmet that have been baking inside a closed gear bag for a day are going to make a hotel room unlivable in about ten minutes. A spray gear deodorizer or a few deodorizing pucks tossed in the bag overnight is a small thing that the entire family will thank you for. Trust me on this one.
One thing most first-time families miss: wet gear management. After a day of games, especially in the rain, you are walking back into a hotel room with wet pads, wet cleats, wet uniforms, and three kids who want pizza. Hang the gear immediately — over chairs, over the AC unit, over the bathroom shower rod. The shoe dryer for cleats. Get ahead of it Saturday night or Sunday morning will be miserable.
The Car Ride — Don’t Forget the Drive Itself
Five hours each way. Snacks, drinks in the cooler, comfortable clothes for the kids — pillows and small blankets make a real difference for younger kids. And for older kids — chargers for every device, headphones, and don’t fight the screens on a long drive home. They just played four games in two days. Let them zone out.
A lot of families will stop for a real lunch or early dinner on the way down Friday. We are not one of those families — I am the dad who treats the GPS arrival time as a personal challenge to beat — so we usually grab something the kids can eat in the car when we pick them up from school early on Friday.
Want this whole list as a printable one-page PDF? Grab the free Complete Tournament Packing Checklist — the exact reference document we wish someone had handed us before our first tournament. It’s free.
A Few Things We’ve Learned the Hard Way
A few quick notes from years of getting this wrong before getting it right.
- Pack the night before, not the morning of. Friday morning packing is how the stick stays in the garage.
- Lay everything out before it goes in the bag. One pile per kid on the floor of the bedroom. If you can see it, you packed it. If you can’t, you didn’t.
- Keep a “tournament bin” in the garage. Wagon, chairs, cooler, blankets, umbrellas, the Handy Bag. Always packed, always ready. Cuts your packing time in half.
- Take a photo of the loaded car before you pull out. Sounds silly. Has saved us multiple times. When you can’t remember if you packed something, the photo is the answer.
- Trust your kid less than you want to. Even teenagers will tell you “yes, I packed everything” without having opened their gear bag. Verify.
What’s Next
The packing list is the foundation. But once you’ve been to a few tournaments, you start noticing the smaller stuff that separates a smooth weekend from a stressful one — team tent etiquette, hotel selection strategy, what to do during the eight-hour gap between games.
That’s where the next few posts are headed — all coming over the next few Sundays.
Want the Printable Version?
Everything in this post — gear, field setup, weather backup, parent essentials, hotel, car ride — is in our free Complete Tournament Packing Checklist PDF. One page. Printable. Stick it on the fridge or in the gear bag. Use it every weekend.
→ Get the Free Complete Tournament Packing Checklist
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