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Meet the BKF Champion Futsal Team

May 6, 2021

This is the story about the BKF champion futsal team, but it’s more than that. The Bar Keepers Friend part of this story began when two employees, Candido and Jairo, approached BKF management about sponsoring a soccer team – actually, a Futsal team. However, the real story started several months earlier with a lot of hard work and dedication.

What is Futsal?

So, what is Futsal? It’s the official indoor soccer game of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association). It’s played indoors on a field about the size of a basketball court with five-player teams. The Futsal ball is ¾ size of a regulation soccer ball.

Futsal is a game that soccer player’s all over the world play in the off-season. Unlike some versions of indoor soccer, futsal skills relate to soccer, which leads us to where this story started.

The BKF Champion Futsal Team History

The road to a championship began with Jairo playing pick-up soccer games after work at Indy Parks and Recreation Rhodius Park. The pick-up games eventually became a loose team that decided to enter the adult Futsal league at the Irsay Family YMCA at CityWay.

After joining the league, they learned many of the teams had played together for several years. The new team was at a disadvantage because they had only played pick-up soccer together, not futsal, and hadn’t developed into a unified team.

Their very first game was against the team that had won the championship the last four years. The BKF team lost six to five but never looked back. They won the rematch by five goals! Jairo, Candido, and the team came from nowhere to become the champions in their first year!

Candido and Jairo at BKF

BKF champion futsal team
BKF champion futsal team

Candido is the BKF product manager and has been with BKF for nine years. Jairo has three years with the company in maintenance. I asked what brought them to BKF. Jairo explained that his mother worked at BKF for more than ten years and always came home happy. She had nothing but good things to say about BKF. It’s where he wanted to work.

Candido and Jairo both said what they liked most about BKF was the family environment. BKF is a family-owned business that treats employees as part of the family.

I asked them how BKF did this, and they both said that the company cared about them. Management would ask what they needed to make their job better, and Paul would come to safety meetings or out to production and ask what he could do to help. In case you don’t know, Paul is the president of the company. To Candido and Jairo, he’s not Mr. SerVass, but Paul like you’d call family. I think that says a lot.

Candido and Jairo shared with me how BKF supports, recognizes, and helps them. They shared how BKF offered excellent benefits, how they’d set up food tables, and even send cards to employees who were under the weather. Think about that. When’s the last time you received a card in the mail from anyone? How much did it mean to you?

The BKF Championship Team

Yes, Candido and Jairo put together a championship futsal team. But I think there are two championship teams in this story, don’t you?


About the Author

Randy Clark - Headshot

Randy Clark is a speaker, coach, and author. He publishes a weekly blog at Randy Clark Leadership.com. Randy is passionate about social media, leadership development, and flower gardening. He’s a beer geek and on weekends (after COVID-19) he can be found fronting the Rock & Roll band Under the Radar. He’s the proud father of two educators; he has four amazing grandchildren and a wife who dedicates her time to helping others. Randy is the author of the Amazon bestseller The New Manager’s Workbook: A crash course in effective management.

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