How one buyer in Australia built a lacrosse kit from 12 American sellers

When we dug through a year’s worth of SidelineSwap orders for our first Swap Report, one city kept popping up at the bottom of the map: Perth, Australia.

Gear from our sellers was routinely flying over 10,000 miles, halfway around the world. And right at the center of it was one guy, quietly putting together an entire lacrosse kit, one order at a time.

Meet David McKeon. He’s a lifelong lacrosse head, a gear enthusiast, and a proud member of Phoenix Lacrosse in Western Australia. Phoenix is the oldest lacrosse club in the state. It was founded in 1896, which is why “Est. 1896” is printed across his hoodie.

Playing lacrosse on the most isolated coast on Earth

If you know anything about Perth, you know it’s famous for two things: incredible coastlines and being the most isolated major city in the world. But what most people don't realize is that Western Australia has a deep, passionate lacrosse community.

Lacrosse came to Western Australia with the 1890s gold rush, when Perth’s population tripled in ten years. The state’s first clubs formed in 1896, and they’ve been playing ever since. Perth has even hosted the men’s World Lacrosse Championship twice, in 1990 and again in 2002.

The local lacrosse scene is close-knit, fiercely competitive, and packed with players who live for the game. The only catch? Sourcing good equipment.

"Living in the most isolated city in the world means getting lacrosse gear from the US is a very expensive exercise to say the least," David explains. "And a lot of suppliers won't even post to Australia."

When you're thousands of miles away from the hotbeds of East Coast lacrosse, getting your hands on current-gen heads or specialty padding feels almost impossible. That’s where the SidelineSwap community came in.

10 months, 16 pieces, 12 sellers

Between September 2025 and June 2026, David went on a mission. He picked up 16 separate pieces of gear from 12 different sellers spread across 11 US states. The total cost? $1,328, with most individual items ringing in under $100.

In Australia, field lacrosse is a winter sport, played from April to September, so David started shopping right as the season was wrapping up. His gear hunt moved fast:

The September Sprint: In just one week, David snagged eight pieces from seven different states. That included team-issued Boys' Latin elbow pads out of Colorado, arm pads from Minnesota, New York, and New Jersey, gloves from Massachusetts and Connecticut, and an STX Stallion 1K head from Virginia.

Fall & Winter Additions: October brought a shaft from Tennessee and custom Penn Quakers arm pads straight from Pennsylvania. By January, four ECD heads arrived from New York and Maryland.

Spring Finishes: In May, he tracked down a pair of Sweetlax Carolina Vapor gloves from Texas, followed by an ECD Mirage head out of New York in June.

All told, David acquired six heads, five pairs of arm pads, three pairs of gloves, a shaft, and those classic Boys' Latin elbow pads. Every single package traveled more than 10,000 miles to land on his doorstep.

A gear head’s dream (and paying it forward)

"Having Sideline as an option has helped myself, my club and others enjoy new or close to new gear at reasonable prices," David says. "It also gives a gear head like me a chance to see and play with gear I would never have had a chance to experience."

Buying six heads in ten months is a pretty clear giveaway that David loves testing out gear. But for David, it’s not just about collecting. It’s about sharing the sport.

In a tight-knit club environment like Phoenix Lacrosse, extra gear never goes to waste. Today the club plays out of Goodchild Park in Hamilton Hill, with two floodlit fields and teams from State League all the way down to kids just picking up a stick. Not everything stays in David’s personal gear bag. When he reached out to us, he was already waiting on a few more orders. As he put it, "Can't wait to make someone's day with them."

That club pride runs deep, and so does Australian women’s lacrosse, which has won the World Cup twice, in 1986 and 2005. This past season, the Phoenix Lacrosse women’s squad took home the 2026 State League premiership in Western Australia, a huge moment for the entire Phoenix family.

"I wish I could express the amount of joy Sideline has given me and others with the gear I have bought over the last couple of years," says David. "West Australia lacrosse is stronger than ever with Sideline on our team."

Stories like David’s are the reason we built SidelineSwap. Whether you’re passing down gear to a player down the street or shipping a head 10,000 miles to Perth, you're helping keep the game accessible and growing.