Of the nine Bainbridge Island Football Club teams competing in the 2019 Washington Youth Soccer Founders Cup championship, one emerged on top of the heap — and two others managed to be finalists.

The annual tournament, held at Starfire Sports in Tukwila, featured teams from all over Washington. Regardless of the quality of competition, however, the BIFC B05 Blue (the 2005 boys), coached by Phil Avison, claimed a state title.

“In an inspirational weekend the boys teamwork was on show throughout,” BIFC officials said.

“In the semifinal they took down [number one-] ranked Colibri from Tacoma 3-2 in a pulsating game that BIFC just would not be denied in. A resilient performance from the defense was ably supported by goals from Hudson Reynolds, Finn McCallum and Avery Decker to ensure their progress to ‘Finals Sunday’ [when] they returned to dominate again and complete the job as they saw off Seattle United B05 Blue in a 2-0 win with goals from Saatje Stevens and Hudson Reynolds.”

Head Coach Avison said, “Through all this time the boys have worked so hard at practice, to be better, both technical and tactically. All those incremental pieces add up, and allow us to have the qualities to be successful. Entwined with this, and really important to me and our club, these boys exhibit things in the right way to represent our club. The pride, passion, work ethic, team work, respect, integrity and sportsmanship runs through all they do. It is a pretty inspiring thing.”

G05 Blue (2005 girls), coached by Ian McCallum, were state cup finalists.

“G05 Blue won a tight semifinal against NSC Green with two goals from Avery Pujolar in a 2-1 win that ensured them a passage to the final against HSA Select G05,” officials said. “The Sunday final brought another tight game with closely matched teams. A final with both sides aspiring for that one goal that could prove to be the difference to the championship. Unfortunately, from their one shot of the game HSA were able to get the goal in the second half that would separate the sides, and leave BIFC on the wrong side of the 0-1 final scoreline.”

The 2004 boys team, coached by Ben Campbell, were also state cup finalists.

“B04 Blue won exceedingly convincingly in the semifinal against Seattle United West B04 Blue 5-0 to ensure their progress to the Founders Cup final to meet HSC Rebano on Sunday,” officials said. “Earlier in the season BIFC played an 11-goal thriller against this opponent in a 6-5 scoreline, so everyone knew this was going to be an exciting final.”

Everyone was right.

“BIFC twice came from behind with goals from Damoni Mckenna-Greenawalt to tie the game up at 2-2 heading into the final quarter of the game,” officials said.

“HSC, with their free scoring offensive kept on trying to score, and got that go-ahead goal with less than 10 minutes to go. As much as Bainbridge pushed for it, that third equalizer did not come. A super performance form the boys ended with a BIFC 2-3 loss to HSA from Highline. Coach Ben Campbell commented after the game how immensely proud of the team effort and collective performance from the BIFC B04 boys.”

Other BIFC squads were not bereft of celebratory performances either. For complete results, visit www.bifc.net.