LAKEWOOD – Steal this game? No, The Classical Academy took it back.

TCA watched its 15-point lead morph into a three-point deficit in the third quarter Wednesday at Jefferson County Stadium. However, the Titans recovered in the fourth to defeat No. 4 Green Mountain 27-24 in the 4A flag football semifinals.

The Titans will return to the title game after they advanced to the championship round in 2024.

“Our girls were up, then down, then came back up,” TCA coach Dale Meyerrose said. “Our girls took the best that Green Mountain had. They’re a very good team and we feel fortunate, but our girls earned this.”

The No. 1-seeded Titans (15-3) dominated the first half where quarterback Kelsey Peterson threw two touchdowns to Reagan Harter, another to Brooklyn Blair and had just one interception.

But in the second half, the Titans’ momentum whipsawed like a stock chart in 2020 after a solid opening. In a 63-second span, Green Mountain built a 24-21 lead in the third.

With Green Mountain in TCA territory, multiple Titans players escaped the Rams’ blockade, but quarterback Savannah Plumley scrambled backward from the Titans’ 30 to the 45, eluded two TCA players, bolted back to the 30 and found Gutierrez for six.

The next play, the Rams returned an interception for a touchdown to cut the lead to 21-18. After that score, Green Mountain intercepted Peterson for the second time in 20 seconds and tacked on six on a touchdown reception to make it 24-21 with 5:03 left in the third.

“What’s going through my mind is can we change the momentum because they clearly changed the momentum on us,” Meyerrose said. “We needed to change it back on them, otherwise the game was over.”

As Peterson returned to the sideline after the Rams took the lead, she said her coaches and teammates steadied her composure.

“My hype man, Ryann Ferguson, always hypes me up and makes me look at her and tell her ‘I got this. We’re going to be OK,’” Peterson said. “In the huddle, we also do a team deep breath before we start. I had to refocus and get into the mindset of knowing that I can throw completions and I have receivers who make plays.”

Blair shifted the momentum and made a play on defense in the fourth quarter with an interception in the end zone on fourth and goal to give the Titans the ball at the 20 with 8:55 left in the game.

“Our coaches always tell us to focus on the next play and I know that’s in a lot of the girls’ heads as we’re playing,” Blair said.  

This paved the way for the Titans to dink and dunk their way to the end zone for a 27-24 lead with 4:47 left. Peterson found her “hype man” Ferguson for the 7-yard touchdown reception for the pair’s first score of the night.

“We tend to have a lot of big plays but on that drive, it was just 5 yards at a time,” Peterson said. “We had to get it downfield and into the end zone. I had to make that switch to knowing I could complete passes instead of thinking, ‘Don’t throw an interception.’”

Harter, the sophomore who averages 70.4 reception yards per game, said she’s grateful to return to the championship. The Titans hope to rectify last year’s ending where TCA finished second to Mountain View.

“We want it more this year,” Harter said. “We want to prove that we can win and show that we should have won last year.”

After No. 2 Mountain View beat No. 3 Pomona 13-12 in Wednesday’s other semifinals game, the 4A championship will now be a rematch from 2024. The Titans face the Mountain Lions at 4 p.m. Saturday at Trailblazer Stadium. TCA defeated Mountain View 39-32 in triple overtime on Sept. 6.