Fairfax and Loudon County soccer fields bustled with action November 21-22 as 22 All Star teams representing BRYC’s U8 through U19 Divisions joined approximately 400 others entered in the ninth annual Herndon Cup tournament.  While four squads of U8 girls and boys played for the fun of it, the other 18 teams hoped to come home with trophies...and a remarkable seven of them did just that. 

After "seeding games" on Saturday placed all the teams in the lower or upper divisions for Sunday’s "win or go home" action, in the lower division the U9 Boys coached by Thieu Nguyen, made it to the finals before falling in the championship game but earned Finalist trophies.  Two other teams, the U11 Boys coached by Conrad O’Connell, assisted by Jon Parker; and the U19 Boys coached by Andy Dimond won all their games on Sunday to earn Champion’s honors.

Meanwhile, in the very difficult upper division, three teams including the U11 Girls coached by Octavio Alfaro, assisted by Kevin Ross; the U12 Boys coached by Fred Welther; and the U10 Girls coached by Laura Leigh, assisted by her husband Stanley; reached the finals to earn Finalist trophies, while a second U10 Girls team coched by Dave Diaz, assisted by Anning Smith and Mike Choffel, seeded sixth after Saturday’s action, won all its three games on Sunday against the second, third and fourth seeds, to take home the tournament’s highest honor, besting 14 teams overall to earn  the Champion’s trophies.

Congratulations to all the teams and their coaches noted above for their hard work and great play...and to all the other BRYC squads who may not have earned tournament honors but are still BRYC’s All Stars in every sense of the word. 

The webmaster made it to fourteen games over the two days to photograph as much action as he could take in.  Several talented team parents have also been most gracious in posting their photos elsewhere on the web and forwarding links.  Photo galleries with a few of the best shots from either the parents or the webmaster are now posted on the Tournaments page for the Junior and Senior Divisions.  Team photos (in addition to those linked above) are being posted on league pages.  And finally, here’s a link to a three minute video put together by Ron Jones, a professional wedding photographer (and a pretty good soccer photographer too!) and father of one of the champion U11 Boys.  It’s really quite wonderful.  Enjoy!