A year ago, these kids had nowhere to play. Now they’re going to the Hall of Fame

A year ago, there wasn’t going to be organized youth tackle football in Bellingham in 2018.

Now the City of Subdued Excitement has a team playing for a national championship.

The Bellingham Knights, a 29-player team made up of 9- and 10-year olds, is heading to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, to play in the 2018 World Youth Championship, which bills itself as “the Little League World Series of youth football,” according to its website.

The Knights learned Friday that they will receive a first-round bye and will play either West Virginia or Delaware Friday, Dec. 14, at the Pro Football Hall of Fame Complex, coach Cory Deter told The Bellingham Herald in an email. Should Bellingham advance to Sunday’s championship game at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, the game will be broadcast Jan. 1 on CBS Sports Network.

“I’ve been playing football for the last four years, and the last two teams I’ve been on have had major losing streaks,” lineman Finn Gregoire, 10, told The Bellingham Herald in an interview Wednesday, “so this means a lot to me.”

As hard as Finn and his teammates have been working toward this goal, Deter and a handful of other coaches and parents have worked even longer to build the program out of thin air.

On Nov. 21, 2017, the Boys & Girls Club of Whatcom County announced in a news release that after 50 years of offering youth tackle football in Bellingham. the 2017 season would be its last.

To fill the void, Deter and some of the other coaches from the old Boys & Girls program banded together to launch the Bellingham Youth Football (BYF) program.

Deter said it wasn’t easy, taking “hundreds of hours” to file for 501c tax status, put together the program’s bylaws, decide how to best run the new start-up, order new uniforms and do just about everything else you could imagine a new program would need.

And they had to do it all in less than a year.

“It was simply the love of the game,” Deter said of the group’s reasoning for putting all the work in. “It’s a great game. Everyone donated hours — even some people without kids in youth football, they just love this game and wanted to see it continue.”

Their work was rewarded with 130 to 140 kids signing up to play football this fall — enough to create four teams, including the 9- and 10-year old team heading to Ohio, two sixth- and seventh-grade teams and an eighth-grade team.

“Bellingham isn’t a big football town — that’s pretty well known,” Deter told The Bellingham Herald in an interview Wednesday. “Getting 130 to 140 kids out this year in a community of 100,000 isn’t that great, but the results have been good. I think it will grow. The kids have all had a great experience this year, and we’ve had people trickle in that hadn’t heard about us and it was too late for them to sign up.”

Getting one of the four teams through to the national championship tournament, well, that’s just icing on the cake.

The Knights won the North Cascade Youth Football League title, avenging their only loss against Mount Vernon in the championship game and proving they were worthy to advance to the regional, held Thanksgiving weekend in Everett. There, Bellingham again beat Mount Vernon to earn the invitation to Ohio.

“To get them and beat them again felt really good,” quarterback/linebacker Nolan Wright, 10, told The Bellingham Herald in an interview Wednesday. “It took tons of grit and not giving up any big plays.”

Wright said it’s going to take similar grit, effort and execution to have success once the Knights get to Ohio.

“This is a big deal, and everybody is excited, because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said 10-year-old running back and linebacker Madison Fulton in an interview Wednesday.

Fulton, who comes from a football family and has a father coaching one of BYF’s older teams, is the only girl on the Knights’ roster, but Deter said she’s as tough as anyone and has even taken down a coach or two during practices.

In fact, Bellingham’s roster is a fairly good cross-section of the community it represents, as the team has players from 12 of the 14 public elementary schools in Bellingham, as well as players from Whatcom Hills Waldorf, Bellingham Christian, Lynden Christian, Custer Elementary and a home-schooled student.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Deter said. “I don’t know if more than five of them go to the same school — they’re from all over Bellingham, all different races and economic backgrounds. We have kids whose parents are doctors and some that need scholarship money just to pay their fees. It’s wonderful to see the kids come together.

“They’re all brothers and one sister, and they’re all dedicated to one common goal.”

Thang Dang, a 10-year-old receiver/linebacker/cornerback, was born in Vietnam and his family moved to the United States when he was in kindergarten. He said the team was quick to develop friendships and hang out away practice.

“As we practiced more and more, we got closer and closer,” Dang told The Bellingham Herald in an interview Wednesday. “We developed a friendship naturally. ... We’re all good friends and we help each other out.”

Now this band of Bellingham brothers and one sister is hoping to capitalize on one of the biggest opportunities in their young lives and win a couple more games together.

“Our offense is great and we have some nice, play-making defenders,” Hudson Neff, a 10-year-old receiver/running back/cornerback, told The Bellingham Herald in an interview Wednesday. “We’re really excited to travel to Ohio and play a few more games.”

2018 Bellingham Knights

No. Player (Elementary school)

2. Nolan Wright (Happy Valley)

3. Alexander Miller (Geneva)

5. LeeRoy Varn (Happy Valley)

6. Maddy Fulton (Alderwood)

7. Aiden Pullar (Sunnyland)

8. Hudson Neff (Wade King)

9. Theo Quiggle (Happy Valley)

10. Cole Turrell (Lowell)

11. Benjamin Leonard (Silver Beach)

13. Ace Cronck (Geneva)

15. Thang Dang (Rossevelt)

16. Johann Bermudez (Roosevelt)

17. Torin Retz (Northern Heights)

22. Xavier Kelley (Happy Valley)

23. Brody Hoagland (Roosevelt)

24. Sebastian Bowers (Geneva)

26. Styles SanClement (Carl Cozier)

28. Jordan Coulam (Birchwood)

29. Nate Cronck\u0009(Geneva)

30. Adam Parry (Happy Valley)

48. Kendall Heagy (Lynden Christian)

49. Carter Duckworth (Carl Cozier)

57. Haiden Deter (Geneva)

77. Kody Moa (Custer)

82. Lucas Fisher (Bellingham Christian)

83. Brenden Garcia (Parkview)

90. Finnian Gregoire (Whatcom Hills Waldorf)

91. Joseph Boyd (Northern Heights)

99. Janzen Breakey (Home school)

Coaching staff

Cory Deter

Adam Leonard

Gavin Kvanges

Keegan Kenfield

Douglas Miller

Josh Turrell

Jeff Gregoire