Pomona football stays on the rails to advance to 3A semis

ARVADA — Pomona’s football train is running full-speed ahead into the Class 3A state semifinals. 

The No. 3-seeded Panthers held on for a 27-23 victory over No. 6 Windsor on Saturday night at the North Area Athletic Complex. 

“It’s crazy,” Pomona junior linebacker DJ Heer said of Pomona advancing to the semifinals. “At the beginning of the year we all just wanted to go to state. Now we are going to the semifinals and a chance to go to the championship game.”

No. 2 Mead (10-1 record) will host Pomona (9-3) in a 3A semifinal next week. The Mavericks took a 34-23 victory over No. 7 Pueblo Central in an earlier quarterfinal Saturday in Mead. No. 5 Green Mountain and top-seeded Thompson Valley will square off in the other 3A semifinal next week.

Mead and Pomona have a connection with the Mavericks’ head coach Jason Klatt being the son of legendary Pomona coach Gary Klatt.

“I’m really excited. I’ve met Jason (Klatt) a couple of times,” Pomona coach Nate Johnson said of facing Mead with a trip to the 3A title game in Fort Collins on the line. “Nothing but respect for the Klatt Family and what they have done at Pomona and what Jason has built at Mead. It is going to be another slugfest.”

The Panthers were able to outlast Windsor in the final playoff game in the state Saturday. Pomona took its biggest lead of the game 27-17 with a 51-yard touchdown run by senior Bauer Swazo on the first play of the fourth quarter. 

However, Windsor answered with senior Tripp Thomas scoring his third touchdown of the game on a 10-yard run with 8:42 left in the fourth quarter to cut the lead to 27-23 after a missed PAT.

Pomona went 3-and-out and was forced to punt. However, senior Noah Sanchez who had struggled on a few punts delivered his biggest punt of his career pinning Windsor deep in its own territory with 6:36 left in the fourth quarter.

“I messed up the first few. I know coming out of halftime I had to get it right,” Sanchez said of his final punt that put Windsor on its own 4-yard line. 

Windsor did advance past Pomona’s 40-yard line, but faced a 4th-and-2 from the Panthers’ 38-yard line with under 2 minutes to play.

“I knew (Windsor) was going to punch back,” Johnson said. “I loved that our defense sucked it up. That is three years in the making. We found a way. We dialed up a blitz I hadn’t run since our intra-squad scrimmage in August. They hit it to perfection.”

Junior defensive back Dominic Martin came in over the center on the fourth-down play and came on a middle blitz. Martin tackled Thomas two yards behind the line-of-scrimmage to have Windsor turn the ball over on downs.

“All of us were all hyped and ready to do something great,” said Heer, who came in to clean up after the initial hit on Thomas. “When Dom made that stop everyone freaked out. It was amazing.”

Pomona grabbed a first down and then were able to take a few knees to run out the clock.

After just three victories over the previous two seasons in 5A, Pomona is back in the semifinals for the first time since the Panthers advanced to the 5A semifinals during the COVID-shortened 2020 season.