A lacrosse championship does not hand out three medals. It hands out three rosters. Win a field lacrosse final with a squad of twenty-two and the podium alone consumes sixty-six pieces before a single MVP, all-tournament or participation award is counted — and that arithmetic is the first thing that separates a lacrosse order from a football order or a 5K order. We cast custom medals in our own die-casting factory in Huizhou, Guangdong, and we have been doing it since 2010. The lacrosse clubs, tournament directors and box league administrators who write to us almost never open with design questions. They ask how many pieces they actually need, whether their club crest will survive the mould, and whether the order will land before the first face-off of the season.
Those three questions are the spine of this guide. Everything below comes from real orders and real conversations — the award ladder that lacrosse uses and most other team sports do not, the structural difference between field and box programs, what zinc alloy can and cannot reproduce from a stick-and-helmet logo, and the calendar that a spring season forces on every buyer in North America.
[Image: custom-lacrosse-medals-guide.jpg — Die-cast lacrosse medals with crossed-stick relief and club-colour enamel, hung on printed neck ribbons beside a helmet]
Why Lacrosse Awards Are Built Differently
Lacrosse is a roster sport, and a roster sport multiplies everything. Men’s field lacrosse puts ten players on the field at a time, women’s field lacrosse twelve, box lacrosse six — but the medal count is driven by the squad list, not the starting line-up. A club that dresses twenty players for a tournament final needs twenty gold medals, twenty silver and twenty bronze if it sweeps a division. Multiply that across four divisions in one event and a modest-looking tournament has consumed several hundred pieces before anyone has ordered a single MVP award.
That single fact reshapes the purchasing conversation. In a road race the medal is a unit of one; in lacrosse it is a unit of twenty, and the buyer is usually a volunteer club manager or tournament director working from a spreadsheet rather than a procurement department.
The second difference is the calendar. Field lacrosse in North America runs a compressed spring season, roughly February through May, with club tournaments clustered into weekend showcases. Box lacrosse runs a winter indoor season in Canada and the northern United States. Both mean the same thing for a factory: an enormous share of the year’s lacrosse volume arrives in a narrow window, and buyers who order in November get a comfortable production slot while buyers who order in February are competing with everyone else.
The third difference is how the medal is worn. A lacrosse player receives it straight off the field and puts it on immediately for the team photo — so it has to sit correctly on the chest, survive a helmet carried in one hand, and still read in a phone photograph. Ribbon length and attachment are half the product in this sport.
The Award Ladder: Placement, MVP, All-Tournament and Participation
Most sports stop at gold, silver and bronze. Lacrosse events typically run five or six award tiers at once, and each tier has a different quantity, a different design logic and a different unit cost. Getting the ladder right is where a lacrosse budget is won or lost.
| Award tier | Who receives it | Typical count per event | How we usually build it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st, 2nd, 3rd placement | Full roster of each placing team | Three times the roster size | One cast design, three platings — gold, nickel, copper |
| Tournament MVP | One player | One piece, sometimes one per division | Distinct shape or larger format, name laser-engraved |
| All-tournament team | Selected players across all teams | Ten to twelve | Same design as placement, squad number engraved |
| Participation | Every registered player | The largest line on the order | Simpler relief, smaller format, single plating, acrylic or zinc |
| Most improved, coaches award, spirit award | One to three per club | Small, club-level | Placement design reused with a different ribbon and engraving |
| League statistical awards | Leading scorer, top goaltender, rookie of the year | Three to six per season | Small distinct piece, heavy engraving, often a keeper award |
The economics of that table are simpler than they look. Every cast design needs its own steel mould, so the cheapest way to run a full ladder is one mould plus variation. Placement medals become three awards the moment you change the plating from gold to nickel to copper. All-tournament medals become twelve individual awards the moment you engrave a different name on each back. The MVP is the one tier that usually justifies its own tooling, because it is the piece the winner keeps on a shelf for a decade.
Where clubs overspend
The pattern we see most often is a club commissioning five separate moulds for five award tiers when two would have covered the season. If your participation medal and your placement medal share a face design and differ only in plating and ribbon, you have saved the tooling cost of an entire mould — and nobody at the ceremony notices. Our sports medals range shows how far one face design can be pushed across plating, ribbon and engraving. Reserve new tooling for the awards that are genuinely different in kind: the MVP, a season-long keeper trophy, a commemorative piece for a club anniversary.
Field Lacrosse vs Box Lacrosse: Two Different Award Structures
Field and box lacrosse share a name and a stick, but they buy medals in almost opposite ways. Field lacrosse is tournament-driven and outdoor; box lacrosse is league-driven and indoor, with deep roots in Canada and in Haudenosaunee communities where the game originated. If you are ordering for both, do not assume one specification covers the other.
| Dimension | Field lacrosse | Box lacrosse |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Ten a side (men), twelve a side (women), outdoor turf | Six a side, indoor boarded floor |
| Season shape | Compressed spring season, February to May, weekend tournaments | Winter league, regular season plus playoffs |
| Award rhythm | Per event — a new medal every tournament weekend | Per season — one design, awarded at the end |
| Dominant tiers | Placement sets, all-tournament team, participation | League champion, playoff MVP, statistical awards |
| Identity emphasis | Event name and host club forward | Club and league crest forward, year bar behind |
| Wearing habit | Neck ribbon at the on-field ceremony | Helmet hanger, bag clip or short cord |
| Design pressure | Volume and repeatability across many divisions | One design that must carry a whole season’s meaning |
For a field program, the practical answer is usually one cast design per season plus per-event ribbons. The medal face carries the club or the tournament brand; the ribbon carries the event name, the date and the division. That way a club playing six tournaments in one spring buys one mould and six ribbon print runs, and every medal still reads as specific to the weekend it was won.
For a box league, the design has to survive being looked at for five months. League administrators want the crest large, the year prominent, and the back face reserved for engraving — champion, finalist, leading scorer, top goaltender and the individual name. Because box seasons end in a single playoff weekend, that engraving list is confirmed late, so we hold the plated pieces ready and engrave once the final results are in.
Youth box lacrosse is its own category
Minor box associations often need one design across four or five age divisions, differentiated only by a colour band on the ribbon and the division name. The medal itself is identical, which keeps the association’s tooling to a single mould for the entire season.
Casting a Stick, a Helmet and a Crosse in Metal
Lacrosse has the most graphically difficult iconography of any team sport we produce, because its symbols are built from thin lines and open space. A stick is a shaft, a head and a mesh pocket. A helmet is a shell with a cage. Both are the kind of artwork that looks superb as flat graphics and fails immediately in a die-casting mould — unless the design is redrawn for metal.
The limits are fixed and non-negotiable. Minimum line width is 0.3mm; anything finer will not fill reliably and will come out of the mould broken or blurred. Minimum relief height is 0.4mm; that is the smallest step a raised element can stand above the surface and still read as a distinct layer after plating and enamel. Minimum wall thickness is 2mm; thin isolated protrusions need enough metal behind them to fill and to survive handling.
The pocket problem
The mesh pocket of a lacrosse head cannot be cast as mesh. At any wearable medal size the strings would be far below 0.3mm, and the open cells would break the mould. The working solution is to cast the head as a solid silhouette with the pocket represented as a shallow recessed field, then either leave it as bare metal or fill it with a single enamel colour so it reads as depth rather than as netting. From two metres away — which is the distance that matters at a ceremony — the silhouette does all the work.
The helmet cage problem
A face mask cage is a grid of thin bars, and a grid is the hardest thing to cast cleanly. We usually thicken the bars to the 0.3mm minimum and reduce their number, or cast the shell in relief and treat the cage as a shallow engraved line on the face of the shell rather than as a raised structure. The result reads unmistakably as a lacrosse helmet while staying inside what the mould can actually produce.
What casts beautifully
Crossed sticks are the single most castable lacrosse motif, because the crossing point gives the design structural mass exactly where thin shafts would otherwise fail. A stick head with a ball, a helmet in three-quarter view, a shield containing a crest, and a stylised stick-and-ball monogram all reproduce well. Our design team redraws client artwork into a castable line drawing within 24 hours, free of charge, and returns it with the relief heights marked so you can see what changed before you approve anything.
Choosing the Material: Zinc Alloy, Brass, Iron or Acrylic
Lacrosse buyers arrive with very different budgets, and the material decision should follow the award tier rather than the other way around.
| Material | Density (g/cm³) | Forming route | Best for | Constraint to plan around |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zinc alloy (Zamak 3, 5, 7) | 6.7 | Die-cast at 385°C on an 88-tonne press | Three-dimensional relief, fine crests, the default for lacrosse placement and MVP medals | Needs 2mm minimum wall; heavier than aluminium at the same size |
| Brass | 8.9 | Stamped or cast | Premium club awards, keeper pieces, a heavy hand-feel | Above 3mm thickness it becomes difficult to stamp |
| Iron | 7.8 | Stamped | High-volume budget runs | Above 4mm thickness it becomes difficult to stamp; plating must be sound or it will corrode |
| Aluminium | 2.7 | Stamped or die-cast | Large-format pieces, lightweight participation medals | Noticeably lighter in the hand; less of the heft athletes associate with an award |
| Acrylic | — | Cut and printed | Modern participation awards, transparent effects, tight budgets | No cast relief at all; the design must work as flat graphics |
| Stainless steel, wood, resin | — | Various | Commemorative and display pieces | Longer tooling lead time; better suited to single awards than team sets |
Zinc alloy is what most lacrosse medals are made of, and the reason is physical. Zamak melts at 385°C, and its fluidity at that temperature is what allows a 0.3mm line and a 0.4mm relief step to fill completely on an 88-tonne press. Brass at 8.9 g/cm³ gives a denser hand-feel and suits a club’s premier award, but the 3mm stamping ceiling limits how much relief you can build in. Iron at 7.8 g/cm³ is the budget route for large participation runs, with a 4mm ceiling, and aluminium at 2.7 g/cm³ is the answer when a medal must be large but light. Acrylic is a genuine option where the budget per player is tight, but it carries no cast relief at all, so a champion’s medal made that way reads as a token.
Soft Enamel, Imitation Hard Enamel and Club Colours
Lacrosse club identity is loud — two-colour crests, league marks, contrasting trim — and enamel is how that identity gets onto metal. There are two routes, and the choice changes both the look and the durability. Both sit on the same die-cast base, and both are covered in more depth in our enamel medals range.
| Feature | Soft enamel | Imitation hard enamel |
|---|---|---|
| Fill depth | About 0.3mm, recessed | About 0.5mm, filled and polished flat |
| Surface | Metal lines stand proud; colour sits below them | Colour and metal sit level; smooth to the touch |
| Look | High contrast, graphic, slightly textured | Ceramic-like, refined, closer to a cast heirloom |
| Curing | Low-temperature bake at 60–70°C for 60–90 minutes | High-temperature bake at 100°C for 60 minutes |
| Field durability | Recesses can hold dirt after a muddy game | Flat surface wipes clean |
| Best for | Bold colour blocks read at a distance, participation and placement tiers | Crisp crests, fine monograms, MVP and keeper awards |
For lacrosse specifically, the durability line matters more than it does in most sports. A spring field season means mud, rain and abrasive turf, and a soft enamel recess is a place where grit collects. If the medal is going to be worn repeatedly rather than displayed, imitation hard enamel at 0.5mm is the more practical choice; if it is going to be photographed on the field and then framed, soft enamel’s contrast photographs better.
The colour underneath the enamel comes from plating, and plating is a nine-step process on our line: de-waxing, ultrasonic cleaning, alkaline copper at roughly 500 seconds as the base coat, acid copper for 20–60 minutes for gloss, the colour plate, a tunnel oven at 100°C for 40 minutes, clear lacquer, and unloading. The alkaline copper step is what gives the finish its adhesion, and it is the reason a lacrosse medal survives a season of handling without the plating lifting at the rim.
The two-sided crest and league logo question
Many lacrosse clubs want the club crest on the front and the league or tournament mark on the back — partly for identity, partly because league rules sometimes require the sanctioning body’s mark on any award. A two-sided cast piece comes from a single mould with relief on both faces, which is a more complex tool and is quoted separately. The cheaper alternative is a one-sided medal with the league mark pad-printed or laser-engraved on the reverse, which is usually sufficient. We will tell you which one your artwork actually needs rather than defaulting to the expensive option.
Ribbons, Helmet Hangers and Neck Cords
The attachment is where lacrosse diverges most sharply from other sports, and it is the detail buyers forget until the sample arrives. A standard woven neck ribbon runs 860–900mm long by 20–30mm wide, which hangs correctly on an adult. For youth divisions we use a shorter 800mm by 20mm ribbon so the medal sits at chest height instead of swinging at the knees.
In box lacrosse and in club settings where the medal is handed out in a dressing room rather than at a ceremony, a full-length neck ribbon is often the wrong product. Players walk off with a helmet in one hand and a stick in the other. A helmet hanger — a short strap with a clip that loops through the helmet cage or a gear bag handle — keeps the medal visible and untangled. A short cord or a carabiner-style clip serves the same purpose for players who do not want anything around the neck.
What to specify on the ribbon
Ribbon printing is the cheapest way to make one cast design serve many events. For a field tournament, print the event name, the host club, the date and the division. For a box league, print the league mark, the season year and the age group. Woven ribbon with a logo reproduces well at 20–30mm width; narrower ribbon loses fine type. Our medal ribbons range covers woven ribbon, lanyard, cord and clip attachments, and we can supply a ribbon sample with the medal sample so you approve the two together.
Sizes, MOQ and the Spring Season Timeline
Size is a compromise between presence and cost, and in lacrosse it is also a compromise with the wearer’s age. A medal that looks authoritative on a varsity player can look absurd on a nine-year-old, and weight matters as much as diameter — zinc at 6.7 g/cm³ is not a light material. For youth divisions we go down a size band and shorten the ribbon rather than reduce the relief, because a smaller medal with full relief still reads as a proper award. Our medal size and thickness guide covers diameter, thickness and perceived weight.
Our minimum order quantity is 100 pieces per design. That figure exists because each design requires a steel mould, and a smaller run lets the fixed tooling cost dominate the unit price. A single lacrosse club ordering placement medals for four teams is already at 240 pieces; a tournament ordering placement plus all-tournament plus participation is comfortably into four figures. Where MOQ becomes a real constraint is a small club that wants a bespoke MVP design for three recipients — in that case we usually steer the club toward a shared design with heavy engraving, or toward a stock shape with custom enamel. Our guide to custom medal pricing shows how the mould cost is amortised across a run, which is the number that actually decides whether a second design is affordable.
Working backwards from the first face-off
Our production flow is fixed: quote and free design within 24 hours, physical sample in 7–10 days, approval, then bulk production in 7–15 days, then inspection and shipping. For a season that starts in February, artwork should be approved by early January at the latest — and earlier if your event falls in the March–April crush, when every club in the region is ordering at once.
Capacity is not the bottleneck — we run 30,000+ pieces per day across our lines — but queue position is. Every order passes a three-stage QC process before it ships, and we would rather hold a production slot for a buyer who planned ahead than rush a piece that arrives the day after the tournament. If your season spans several events, place one order for the whole season and let us schedule the ribbon print runs separately.
Our facilities are BSCI, ISO 9001 and Sedex audited, which matters when a school district or parks department needs supplier documentation before it can raise a purchase order. We ship to customers in over fifty countries, and the client list has included Disney, ByteDance, and race organisations such as BAA and RRCA.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many medals should a lacrosse team order for a championship?
Count the roster, not the starting line-up, and multiply by three for a full placement set. A twenty-player squad sweeping gold, silver and bronze in one division needs sixty pieces. Add two to three spares per tier for ties, late additions and replacements, then add MVP, all-tournament and participation tiers on top of that baseline.
Can you cast a lacrosse stick and helmet in metal?
Yes, with redrawing. The mesh pocket cannot be cast as mesh and a face-mask cage cannot be cast as a thin grid, so we simplify both — the pocket becomes a recessed field, the cage becomes thickened bars or an engraved line on the shell. Crossed sticks cast particularly well because the crossing point provides structural mass. Everything stays within a 0.3mm minimum line width, 0.4mm minimum relief and 2mm minimum wall.
What is the difference between field and box lacrosse medals?
Field lacrosse is tournament-driven, so buyers usually want one cast design per season with a different printed ribbon for each event. Box lacrosse is league-driven, so one design carries a whole season and the back face is reserved for engraving the champion, finalists and statistical award winners. Box medals also tend to use helmet hangers or short cords rather than full-length neck ribbons.
Do you make helmet hangers instead of neck ribbons?
Yes. We supply woven neck ribbons at 860–900mm by 20–30mm, shorter 800mm by 20mm ribbons for youth divisions, and short straps with clips for helmet and bag attachment. We recommend approving the ribbon and the medal together as a single sample, because the attachment changes how the medal sits and photographs.
What is the minimum order quantity for lacrosse medals?
100 pieces per design. Each design needs its own steel mould, so smaller runs make the tooling cost dominate the unit price. Clubs that need only a handful of a bespoke design usually do better with a shared placement design plus engraving, or with a stock shape finished in club colours.
When should we order for a spring season?
Aim to approve artwork by early January for a February start. Sampling takes 7–10 days and bulk production takes 7–15 days, so a January approval leaves a comfortable buffer before the March–April tournament peak. Orders placed in February are still possible but compete for queue position with every other club in the region.
Ordering Lacrosse Medals With Us
Lacrosse awards reward planning more than decoration. Count rosters rather than podiums, decide the award ladder before you decide the artwork, keep the stick and helmet inside the casting limits of 0.3mm line width, 0.4mm relief and 2mm wall thickness, and work backwards from the first face-off rather than forwards from the purchase order. Do those four things and the medal table at the end of the season will be right the first time.
We cast every piece in our own factory in Huizhou, Guangdong, where we have been making medals since 2010 — more than fifteen years of production experience. Zinc alloy, brass, iron, aluminium, stainless steel, acrylic, wood and resin are all in range, MOQ is 100 pieces per design, design is free within 24 hours, and every order passes a three-stage QC process. If you are planning a spring season, send us the roster counts and the crest now, while the queue is still short.
Start your lacrosse medal order
Related Reading
- How to order custom medals in bulk: quantities, moulds and MOQ
- Soft enamel vs hard enamel: which finish should you choose?
- Custom sports medals: a tournament organiser’s design guide
Related reading: spinning medals for sports programmes — custom spinning medals with a rotating centre — same Zamak die-cast base, MOQ 100 per design.
