As league, club, and season structures go, the USL League 2 is one where the inevitable largely doesn’t, and cannot, exist. Short summer seasons crammed into a couple months doesn’t allow room for teams to find rhythms and round into form later in the season, and high turnover in most rosters due to most players typically coming through between their collegiate seasons doesn’t lend to many veteran lineups. A club’s staying power among the habitually postseason bound is a monumental credit to a club’s staff and supporting community that allows for roster depth, and later roster attrition as players are recalled for collegiate conditioning.

So, for all that unpredictability, it’s that depth, based on their staff and community support, that makes the final match of the USL League 2 season feel a bit like an inevitability. Ballard FC and Lionsbridge FC are a bit mirror clubs of each other, perched on opposite coasts of the nation. On the pitch, both dominated the regular season last year before bowing out in early disappointments, both were heavily favored this season, suffered one or two setbacks in divisional play, then found their groove late to cruise to division titles. Off the pitch, each team regularly plays before home crowds nearing two thousand fans a match, led by supporters groups in Ballard’s Bridge Keepers and Lionsbridge’s Defenders of the Bridge, spurred on by the clubs’ rallying cries of “Up The Bridges” (Ballard) or “Up The Bridge” (Liosnbridge).

For all the similarities, their postseason paths thus far have been glaringly different. In the initial weekend’s rounds, Ballard FC hosted, and won, two of the more comfortable matches in the league, casting aside outmatched New Mexico United u23 and an emotionally spent Oly Town Artesian team in turn. The cupcakes ended there, as the Bridges traveled 1800 miles to Michigan to compete with the defending national champion Ventura County Fusion for the western conference title. For eighty-three minutes, it looked like Ballard’s story of 2023 dominance would come to an end, down 0-2 to the defending champs. But in the eighty-fourth minute, the Bridges got one back, in the ninetieth minute they were awarded an equalizer, and in ezra time they routed Ventura to win 4-2. The national semifinal would test their mettle in a different fashion, as Ballard scored early on the Midwest Champion, and host, Flint City Bucks, and clung to the slim lead for another eighty-one minutes and change to punch their ticket to the title match.

What they weren’t gifted in early round competition, the Lions of Newport News were provided in home field advantage circumstances. Lionsbridge looked one of the more vulnerable hosts and division winners in their first match, where a plucky Charlotte Eagles side kept the match in doubt to full time as the Lions clung to a 1-0 lead. Their next match against consistent postseason competitor NC Fusion, the Lions shocked everyone, even themselves, by roaring out to a three-goal advantage in the first twenty-two minutes of the match before running out 3-1 winners. With higher-ppm’d clubs in the East and South conferences crashing out in weekend one, the Lions were awarded hosting privileges for a second week. They would need every advantage their home crowd at Townbanke could offer, as the hosts provided comeback heroics and thirty extra time minutes to knock off both Ocean City and The Villages (in PKs) before their dedicated DotB and Overtown Ultra supporters and fans.

The Lions have now traveled 2900 miles to Tukwila Washington to play in front of an overwhelmingly Ballard-favoring crowd sure to number above three thousand fans at historic Starfire Stadium. Whether it’s the hosts or the visitors winning, it will be the victor’s first title match, an achievement for clubs existing just two (Ballard) or six (Lionsbridge) short years. For Lionsbridge, a victory would break the seeming East Conference curse, having not had a champion since the Cape Cod Crusaders (RIP) made it two-national titles-straight in 2003!

Prediction: Lionsbridge finds netting and an early lead within the first fifteen minutes, but the Ballard attack, buoyed by their largest home crowd in club history, can’t be denied and the hosts leave Starfire as national champions in a 3-1 win.

- by Ryan Stallings