Kirkland’s Guild Mortgage pulled out all the stops and very nearly pulled off an upset over defending champ Hancock’s Bakery in the final round of Hopelink’s March Can Drive competition this week, but fell short of the championship in the closest round yet.

The Redmond bakery and two-time title holder brought in 1,472 pounds of food and $525 in cash for a total score this week of 628. First-year competitor Guild Mortgage collected nearly two tons of food this week – 3,993 pounds – along with $50 in cash, but fell short in overall scoring with a final tally of 622 points.

To ensure that businesses of all sizes were able to compete on a level playing field, the competition used a special scoring system: the total pounds of food donated by a business were divided by the total number of employees, resulting in a competitive “score.” Cash donations were converted into pounds at the rate of one pound per dollar.

During the five weeks of the competition, the two finalists collected nearly identical amounts of food, with Hancock’s Bakery bringing in a total of 7,590 pounds and Guild Mortgage edging them out in the overall total, gathering 7,598 pounds.

The 32 businesses competing in the third year of food drive collected a grand total of 23,535 pounds of food and $3,030 in cash donations — nearly two and a half times as last year’s total of 9,809 pounds.

Hopelink’s March Can Drive competition was patterned after the national spring college basketball tournament, matching businesses in weekly contests to see which one could bring in the most food. Teams were bracketed together in pairs and one winner from each 2-member bracket advanced to the following week.