FORT COLLINS - The Train might have slowed over the past few years, but it returned to full speed this season on a different track.

Last crowned Class 5A state champions in 2017, the Pomona football team navigated a difficult few years and reemerged at the top of the football world as 3A state champions.

Junior Chase Keaton’s 40-yard field goal sailed through the uprights on the final play of regulation Saturday afternoon at Canvas Stadium on the campus of Colorado State University, which gave the second-seeded Panthers a 17-14 victory over top-seeded and previously undefeated Windsor to complete the program’s championship resurrection.

“This shows that Pomona is back,” head coach Nate Johnson said. “It looks different, we’re an older school and a smaller school. There’s a lot of naysayers that thought we were done and I took the job with that chip on my shoulder to be honest. We were going to turn it around. We got a great couple of great classes of kids, worked hard and you see the result.”

Indeed, Pomona won the 5A state championship in 2017 in what remains the highest-scoring state championship game in history — a 56-49 victory over Eaglecrest at Empower Field — and followed that with a few more competitive seasons in 5A before going through a 3-17 stretch in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons.

The Panthers won nine games in their debut in 3A in the 2024 season and followed that with this season’s performance, in which they finished 13-1 (with the only loss coming to 4A No. 1 seed Dakota Ridge) and with the program’s third all-time state title (it also has a 4A crown from 1988).

“This is amazing, it means the world,” versatile senior Emmitt Munson said. “Everyone was saying that we were done and we weren’t going to do anything. They wrote us off, but we didn’t write back. It’s the greatest feeling.”

To get to the top, Pomona had to get past a Windsor team that was undefeated and in the hunt for its fifth all-time state title.

A hard-fought first half ended with the Panthers leading by a touchdown, the result of a perfectly executed trick play.

With the ball near midfield, Munson took the snap and pitched it to out in the flat to senior Luis Santana, who strung the play out near the boundary and then launched a ball downfield, where it ended up in the hands of junior quarterback Tucker Ingersoll. Ingersoll pulled it in after a slight bobble and took it to the end zone for a go-ahead score.

“Right when he caught it, my heart spiked and I was like ‘wow,’” said Santana, who had 137 yards of total offense (72 rushing, 49 passing and 16 receiving) and was picked as the National Football Foundation Colorado Chapter Most Outstanding Player after the game. “Luckily, Tucker has great hands to catch the football and score. It was a great play and I bet they didn’t expect it. I didn’t throw a ball all year, so it had to be good.”

That explosive play followed a physical tussle of a half that included a 1-yard touchdown run for the Wizards by senior quarterback Mason Moore as well as a 1-yard plunge by Munson.

The second half was equally fought hard in the trenches, with Windsor (13-1) trying to exert its will behind Oklahoma-bound offensive lineman Deacon Schmitt and others.

Pomona held strong and ended the Wizards’ best bid for scoring with a turnover on downs.

An interception by Windsor senior Grady Sullivan thwarted a potential Panthers scoring drive early in the fourth quarter, but Pomona quickly stuffed the Wizards and got the ball back on its own 40 with 2:33 remaining.

Ingersoll returned to center after lining up wide for much of the game and helped engineer a drive that included a heavy dose of Munson and Santana on the ground.

Pomona worked its way to the 23 with three seconds left before it sent out Keaton, who drilled a kick that looked like it would have been good from 10 yards further.

“It felt amazing. I was nervous going into it, but I knew it was all in God’s plan,” Keaton said. “I trusted my line, I trusted my holder and I knew for a fact that it was going to go in. I’m just blessed and happy I was able to kick this year.”

Johnson watched the kick sail through the uprights with a smile and was soon doused with a ice water near midfield in the ensuing celebration.

“Chase was a former soccer kid and I recruited him from the hallways,” he said. “I wanted him for a year and I got him. He has a strong leg and committed to the weight room. ... When you are doing everything right from January on, getting in your kicks and being mentally locked in, good things happen. I was pretty confident with him out there.”

The drive — and everything that led up to it in holding down an outstanding Windsor team — demonstrated the kind of will and toughness that characterize the Pomona program.

“We practice for moments like this all the time so we can go out on the field and do it in games,” Munson said. “We came to Pomona for moments like that. We were ready and we knew how it was going to go.”

Added Johnson: “At the end of the day, Pomona is Pomona. It doesn’t matter if we’re in 3A or in 5A. We’re blue collar, we roll up our sleeves and get down and dirty. We lift hard and they never complain about conditioning. They knew it was going to take what it was going to take to get it done. I’m so blessed.”