Snohomish United men miss out on division title

Published 11:30 pm Sunday, July 12, 2026

SEATTLE — All Snohomish United needed was a draw.

Entering the final USL League Two regular-season match at Interbay Soccer Stadium on Sunday, Snohomish and Ballard FC held identical 11-1-1 records atop the Northwest Division. Each team had already clinched a spot in the USL2 Playoffs, but United held the upper hand with a head-to-head win against Ballard on June 10.

A draw would be enough to secure Snohomish’s first division title, and end Ballard’s three-year reign atop the Northwest in the process. But United still entered Sunday determined to get a win.

“We knew that we couldn’t go for a draw against a team like this,” Snohomish defender Jack Civitts said. “We wanted to win, and like, who wants to go out there and tie, realistically? We wanted to win.”

Possession went back-and-forth throughout the first half, and Ballard threatened with a handful of counterattack chances, but United strung together a flurry of opportunities entering stoppage time in the first half with the score still 0-0. However, both Carter Gay and Kevin Hernandez suffered injuries in the minutes before halftime, requiring Snohomish to shuffle its formation and rely on some less-experienced substitutes.

In the end, those injuries and adjustments proved too much to overcome. Ballard (12-1-1) scored twice in the first 13 minutes of the second half en route to a 4-0 win, finally capitalizing on the counter and striking again with relentless pressure down the stretch. Ballard’s reign would continue with a fourth consecutive Northwest Division title. Meanwhile, Snohomish (11-2-1) suffered its first loss since the opening match on May 16, going 12 games unbeaten in nearly two full months in between.

After Gay and Zackary Meier held down the fort as the two center backs for most of the first half, Kasey Toevs subbed in to replace Gay in the 43rd minute. Hernandez’s injury right before the break forced left back Beckham Uderitz up to his midfield spot while Silvestre Vallejo-Munoz jumped in on the back line fresh off a two-week absence from a hamstring injury.

“When you just have that many movements and adjustments, it kind of unsettled us,” Snohomish coach Anthony Sardon said. “We’re losing the presence of Kevin Hernandez, of regaining possession of the ball and kind of dictating terms of the way that we play, and Carter Gay’s an absolute warrior and leader of our back line. And the potential type of injury, of it being bad, it kind of devastated the guys.

“But we got to learn from this. We still have the playoffs, so we got to go in and we got to regroup. We can only feel bad about it for 24 hours, and then we got to get back to work.”

In addition to the injuries, United will see its players from the University of Washington depart for their preseason program in Peru. That includes Gay — a Cascade High School alum — who emerged from the locker room with a bag of ice wrapped around his knee after the game. He will need an X-Ray and MRI before determining the severity of the injury, which only adds to the disappointment of the result.

“It totally sucks,” Gay said. “We really wanted to dethrone Ballard and show the rest of the league what we had. The UW guys, it being our last game, it’s really disappointing that we couldn’t get the job done, but that’s why we have next year.”

In the first matchup against Ballard — a 2-0 victory last month — Snohomish capitalized early with a goal in the 10th minute before striking again in the 34th. On Sunday, the go-ahead goal never came, and it was Ballard that struck on the injured Snohomish side early in the second half.

After Ballard goalkeeper Noah Newman secured a United corner kick, he immediately sent it up the left sideline to Zachary Ramsey, who broke into space on the quick counter and centered it to Emmett Layman in the box to go ahead 1-0 in the 48th minute.

“On that corner kick, we always got to be switched on,” Civitts said. “It was just the little details. I mean, they had crosses across the box that were stoppable. Like their corner kick, their fast transitions, we knew that was what they wanted to do. They wanted to possess the ball, lull you to sleep, find gaps from behind because they have (fast) players, so it was just disappointing.”

Ballard threatened with a couple more shots that sailed over the bar before defender Luke Hammond jumped in to make it 2-0 in the 58th minute. Snohomish keeper Kenny Pierpoint left his line to make a big save on Layman inside the box, but Ballard recovered possession and Hammond capitalized.

Anton Hjalmarsson pushed it to 3-0 in the 71st minute on a third-chance shot, poking the ball across the line when United failed to clear the ball out, and Josias Schelb tapped in a net-front cross in the 86th minute for the 4-0 final.

Brothers Aaron and Edgar Leon came close to generating a goal or two for Snohomish down the stretch, but ultimately could not convert. Normally, United does not have to worry about that happening.

Aaron Leon — a Seattle University commit who just won Gatorade Washington Boys Soccer Player of the Year after leading Eastmont High School to the 4A Boys State Championship on May 30 — led the entire Northwest Division with 12 goals this season. Meanwhile, Edgar Leon — who won WAC Freshman of the Year with Seattle in 2024 — was second on the team and tied for third in the division with seven.

“It’s one of those things where it’s like Aaron Leon, obviously, the year that he’s had — being 18 years old and having that type of impact in USL League Two — and if one or two of those fall for him, which they normally do, maybe it’s a completely different game,” Sardon said.

It looked like it could have been a different game in the final minutes of the first half. Hernandez teed up a free kick from nearly 30 yards out, rolling the ball into Connor Lofy at the top of the box for a shot that didn’t make it to the net but rolled to Edgar Leon. A Ballard defender managed to slide in front to prevent the shot from reaching the net, but Nicolas Wiskel intercepted the ensuing goal kick for another chance that soared just wide.

Snohomish made one more push before the halftime whistle, winning back possession and working up the field through the Leon brothers and Lofy before Hernandez fired a shot that Ballard managed to block once again. Hernandez was injured shortly thereafter, and everything unraveled in the second half.

“There’s a lot of guys that haven’t played a lot of minutes this year, which isn’t necessarily their fault, but that’s just kind of what happens when the team’s not super deep,” Gay said. “But we have a good starting 11, and when you got to make changes that aren’t expected, it’s hard for the team to adjust to that.”

With the Huskies players departing the roster, it will be up to Sardon & Co. to find that depth by the time their first playoff matchup rolls around on Friday, when United will be back at Interbay Stadium for the USL2 Western Conference quarterfinals against the Colorado Storm at 2 p.m. PT.

“We’re going to have to rebuild the team,” said Sardon, who acknowledged that the point of the program is about development and setting players up for bigger opportunities elsewhere. “We have a couple days to do it. We have some younger guys that have been training. They just are going to have to meet the moment. We might have to change things tactically and systematically in what we’re doing, and move guys around, but at the end of the day, that’s what we have to do.”