The Hopelink Can Madness trophy is headed back to Kirkland after a spectacular run by Xtreme Consulting Group, Inc. in the sixth year of the competitive food drive. The second-year team cruised through each round of the tournament and in the end, managed to edge out a very determined Universal Avionics team from Redmond in the final round.

Greg Rankich with Xtreme credits teamwork for the win. After bringing in a particularly large haul during one round, the company’s staff came into the Kirkland food bank to help sort their donations.

“We had fun internally and volunteering helped us get even more involved,” Rankich said. “It was a total team effort to support Hopelink.”

In the final round of the competition, Xtreme Consulting brought in 8,121 pounds of food and $585 in cash, while Universal Avionics collected 8,325 pounds of food and $700 this week. Although the second-place finisher collected more in donations, they fell short in total points; the tournament uses a denominator based on the number of employees to convert pounds to points and ensure a level playing field.

During the five-week, 32 businesses in Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue, Shoreline and Seattle collected a total of 47,996 pounds of food and $5,517 cash – the most ever raised during one year of the competition.

Hopelink Can Madness is a bracketed competition similar to the national spring college basketball tournament, matching businesses in weekly contests to see which one can bring in the most food. The annual food drive was created six years ago as a way to help offset the traditional decline in donations after the holidays, while enabling local businesses to compete in a fun, friendly tournament.

Since 2010, the competition has brought in 139,031 pounds of food and $13,561 in cash for Hopelink food banks, which is enough to provide more than 100,000 meals for local families.