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Steamboat Springs — As defining a season as it has been up to this point, maybe the most defining moment of the Steamboat Springs High School football team’s season came midway through Saturday’s Class 3A semifinal game against Pueblo Central.

Up 20-7 at halftime, Steamboat’s defense and offense each made a resounding statement.

Allowing the Wildcats to score would have cut the game to a six-point deficit and turned momentum back to Central and its crowd of more than 2,000 people.

Instead, the Steamboat defense — which was outsized by Central by nearly 50 pounds a man — did what it needed to do.

After a penalty negated the Wildcats’ opening play of its first second-half drive, Central got a first down on a short run by Keanu Valdez.

With the ball at their own 44-yard line, the Wildcats had an incompletion, a 5-yard Valdez run and another incompletion to make it fourth down.

A phenomenal punt by Byram Brown pinned Steamboat at its own 4-yard line.

But that’s when Steamboat had its season-defining moment.

The Wildcats had been in this position before.

Central trailed Falcon, who made the Class 3A quarterfinals, 20-7 at halftime

earlier this season.

That game, the Wildcats barreled back for a 28-20 win.

“We never feel out of it,” Central coach Dave Craddock said. “We’ve had some good comeback victories. But we kept making mistakes. You could feel the momentum building for Steamboat.”

The offensive drive from the 4-yard line didn’t start the way Steamboat wanted it to. The Sailors called a timeout before the drive even began.

“We didn’t get the play in in time,” Steamboat coach Aaron Finch said about the timeout. “There were all kinds of other messes.”

Instead of panicking, however, Steamboat took the ball 96 yards in nine plays, to make the score 28-7.

And what’s the difference in the score being 28-7 to potentially 20-14?

“That was huge,” said Steamboat senior Joe Dover, who had another game that should garner him consideration for Class 3A Player of the Year. “That’s what we wanted. We knew they were getting the ball first. We came out and knew we needed that stop, and we made that 96-yard drive. That was phenomenal. That was the turning point in the game. At that point, they weren’t coming back on us.”

The whole series of events was a thing of football beauty. It was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, a Mexico beach in February, or two feet of powder on a bluebird Colorado day.

But more than anything, it was Steamboat football defining itself. 

“That’s the drive of the year. Really, that’s the best drive of the year,” Finch said. “Throwing, picking and a couple runs in there. … (The defense) got that quick stop, and that was probably bigger. That took any momentum that they had coming out from halftime away.”

The drive was a synopsis of the whole day. A couple of Jack Spady catches, a couple of Austin Hinder runs and a finishing 33-yard touchdown by Dover.

It was a series that defined the whole. It was a series that defined a team that will play for its first state championship since a magical run in 1979.

“But the best bonus out of this thing is I get to coach these young men for another week,” Finch said. “They’ve given me every week possible to be their coach, and it’s an honor.”