There was first, for both teams, a personal demon to expel.

Indeed, the Ellicottville boys soccer team had advanced to consecutive Far West Regionals, only to see Fillmore end its season on both occasions. The Fillmore girls team, meanwhile, a year after reaching the New York State Final Four, while gearing up for a return trip, was instead handed a stunning 1-0 overtime defeat by eventual state runner-up Keshequa in the sectional semifinals.

Entering 2023, the teams shared a similar space inwardly.

Both had plenty of built-in motivation from their playoff exits the year before; both had the bulk of their talent back; both, as hungry as ever, had designs on, this time, achieving what had previously alluded them.

And both did just that.

Ellicottville, in its third try, ousted defending state champion Fillmore, 3-0, to reach its first NYS Final Four. The Fillmore girls, after forging yet another unbeaten regular season, returned to the state semifinals, this time reaching the Class D championship game.

FOR AS strong as both programs had been, especially recently, it was the furthest that either had gotten. In this way, history was made. And for that, both coaches were rewarded: Fillmore’s Jon Beardsley earned the Judy Bliven Award for Big 30 Girls Coach of the Year and Ellicottville’s Matt Finn garnered the Doug Burke Award as the Boys Coach of the Year.

For each, these successes, to some level, seemed predetermined. Ellicottville, after all, returned all 11 starters from a group that had gone toe-to-toe with the eventual state champions. Fillmore welcomed back seven starters, including a generational goal-scorer in Hope Russell, and ultimately featured one of its most veteran lineups with nine senior starters. But that was on paper. Both still had to go out and make good on that promise, handle all the pressure that came with it. And behind their award-winning, battle-tested coaches, each did so, creating all-time seasons and memories for those communities.

“The pressure came with realizing that you could be really awesome and the wrong day happens at the wrong time and you could be done quicker than you wanted to be,” Beardsley noted.

Of the lessons learned from the Keshequa loss, he added: “It puts that fear into you, and it’s a good fear. It’s the fear that, ‘I don’t want to feel that again.’ I heard them say it numerous times throughout the year, we’re not gonna feel like that again. (We) obviously exceeded what we did last year and made up for it.

“We might be good, but that’s the thing about (our) process: If you start settling for, ‘hey, we’re gonna beat 95 percent of the teams we play and feel good about that,’ that’s great. But we always want a little bit more.”

This year, so too did the Ellicottville boys.

“You could see it from that day forward,” Finn said of last November’s regional loss. “I would say almost the next day they were kicking the ball around. The heart and pride they put into this season, starting a year ago, is unimaginable.”

BEARDSLEY had long ago set himself apart in the pantheon of local coaches.

Last fall, he surpassed his award’s namesake as the winningest girls coach in Allegany County history, and this year he recorded his 400th career victory, making him an impressive 418-111-31 through 29 seasons.

Beardsley’s teams have engineered an incredible 83-game regular-season unbeaten streak. They’ve won 75-straight games, settling for a tie early in the streak while having gone almost entirely unscathed since the start of 2019. They’ve advanced to the state final four in two of the last three seasons.

Beardsley now owns four Bliven awards (2015, ‘20, ‘21 and ‘23), two more than any other girls coach. Having already accomplished so much, he still found a way to add to his resume, leading the Eagles to a state championship game appearance, where they fell a bit short of the ultimate prize, bowing to Cincinnatus, 3-0.

In these ways, he now stands alone.

“I’m a big believer in the process, whether that’s cliche or not,” he said. “When you win awards like this and your teams are successful, you realize there’s a lot that goes into it that’s not just the end result, the final game or the award.”

Having studied the habits of successful coaches since he was a kid, Beardsley added: “All the good ones are more concerned with the day-to-day grind and development, improvement — that process — and outcomes, awards and accomplishments kind of take care of themselves.

“It takes a while to create, and that’s probably been one of my biggest goals, is to create an environment where the outcomes kind of take care of themselves if you’re doing things correctly.”

FINN’S numbers might not be as gaudy. Ebbing and flowing through several seasons, he went back over the .500 career record mark (178-173-18) this fall, his 21st season. But he, too, has begun to distinguish himself.

Finn guided the Eagles to their first sectional crown in 2013 and has claimed four more since, including the last three in a row. He constructed a team that took down mighty Fillmore, ending the Eagles’ 43-game win streak, and came within a goal of Poland (2-1 loss) of reaching the state Class D championship game. Much like the ECS girls team had always been, he’s transformed the Ellicottville boys team into a consistent winner.

This year, that growth was requited with a pinnacle moment: a trip to Goshen for the state semifinals.

“There’s never been a doubt in my mind of their mindset,” he said of this year’s group, led by Sam Edwards and Owen Dougherty. “We were in it together, we pushed through it together and we were successful together. With the whole team pushing in the same direction, we were able to go further than we ever have. They’re just a great group of kids, and I’m lucky to be their coach.”

ELLICOTTVILLE and the Fillmore girls traversed the furthest of anyone in the Big 30. In doing so, they left little doubt as to just how good they were.

ECS, before falling to Poland, sat 13-3, having lost only to Class C standouts Maple Grove and Randolph (twice). It outscored opponents 98-17, cruised past North Collins in the Section 6 Class D championship game and topped even Fillmore relatively convincingly (3-0).

Fillmore, meanwhile, with standouts at every level, was virtually untouchable. The Eagles, before the Cincinnatus game, had won 21-straight contests, holding a head-turning 128-4 edge in scoring. It rolled to another county title, outscored its sectional and regional foes by a combined count of 22-0 and blew past Lisbon, 4-1, in the state semis before bowing out on the final day of the season.

Again, for both, this level of success was largely expected.

Aside from the COYs, each team also boasted the Big 30 Player of the Year: Ellicottville’s Edwards shared the award with Bradford’s Mitchell Strauss while Fillmore’s Russell won the girls’ honor after a glittering 71-goal season, the fifth-largest total in New York State history.

To reach uncharted territory, however, both also needed the intangibles. And Ellicottville and Fillmore had those, in the form of strong senior leadership, a shared, clearly-stated goal, kids who’d played together since childhood, and yes, strong coaching.

“One of the things that stood out about this year,” Beardsley said, “with such a senior-heavy group, they’ve gone through a lot of success since they started off, but at the same time, they had just enough last-game-of-the-season failure that has motivated them. And I think, for me, this year was just seeing a group of kids that just were really concerned about each other … to a different level.

“It sounds simple, but it really made a difference that they really were more concerned about what the team did than anything that happened individually, and that’s saying a lot for having some very outstanding individual players.”

AS COACHES, that’s the kind of connected nature that Beardsley and Finn strived to implement. And that’s the kind of culture that helped spur these all-time seasons.

“It doesn’t always happen,” Beardsley went on. “Even when you’re successful, it might just be happening because you’re talented. But I really think the difference for us this year was that recognition that we all had our responsibilities, we all had our roles, they understood their value and it was at a different level than I’ve seen maybe ever.

“That’s not an understatement in my book. It was a huge reason why we went as far as any Fillmore team ever has.”

Another reason was the help that both received. Beardsley said “this award belongs as much to (longtime assistant) coach Jeff Fuller as it does to me.” Finn couldn’t “say enough about assistant coach Chris Edwards.”

“He has them playing in the winter and spring,” Finn said of Edwards. “He does a nice job and the boys are dedicated. They’re eager and willing and want to get better, learn and improve. They got a little taste of what sectionals feel like and now they’ve gotten a little taste of what winning regionals looks like, so I think it’s just making them hungrier every year.

“They were willing to put the time in and they earned this final four year, for sure.”