ARVADA >> As soon as Troy Brown put his second goal in the net during Wednesday’s Class 3A state semifinal game, he raised his hands behind his ears as if to say, “I can’t hear you” to the Peak to Peak soccer fans in attendance at the North Area Athletic Complex.

His go-ahead goal in the 70th minute, during which he expertly drew Peak to Peak’s junior keeper, Drew Kraft, out of the goal before popping it over his head, punched No. 2 Jefferson Academy’s ticket to the state championship on Saturday against No. 1 Holy Family with a 2-1 victory.

He put on a spectacular affair against the No. 3 Pumas on Wednesday night after he first touched leather to nylon in the 15th minute. Last year, during head coach Matt Cassell’s one-year hiatus from the program, the Jaguars were winless. Now they’re guaranteed 3A hardware.

“It was just amazing,” Brown said. “I always play with a little ball with my sister and just swing as hard as I can and that’s what I went up and did. It found the back of the net. And then the second one, I just kept going and put it away, so I was very lucky and very grateful that this all happened.

“It’s all of our team spirit. We know what we are capable of. We’re not a bunch of superstars, but we go and we get the job done. It’s just great. Even my sister, all of our fans coming out, family, it really gets us going. I could barely hear the field because all I could hear was the student sections.”

Cassell’s reintegration into the program flipped it on its head. Brown said that the team returned almost all of the same personnel but needed someone to encourage a hard work ethic. It’s made all the difference in the Jaguars’ 15-3-1 drive toward the finish.

“Those lessons from last year were so critical for them this year,” Cassell said. “They just battled all year. They had a lot that they wanted to prove, and they focused on the little things that they can do to get the results they wanted.”

It all came down to the little things in a game as tightly contested as their semifinal matchup. The Jaguars were never out of the woods, especially when Peak to Peak’s Micah Thengvall netted the equalizer on a penalty kick in the opening seconds of the second half. Jefferson Academy had to rely on its strong defense and midfield to keep the Pumas out of the goal, especially when their man in the goal — Kraft — made save after spectacular save with only his fingertips.

The Pumas ended their year with an 11-3-4 record, even as team captain Tyler Holman estimated that they returned three to five starters from last year’s team. During the 2020 season, the Pumas only mustered five wins.

“We call ourselves the most resilient team in 3A,” Holman said. “I think we come so much from behind. We’ve had a season where we lost a lot of guys, and we came out here and everyone gave everything they had. This program, holy cow, it’s incredible. We turned it around from a couple of seasons ago. Two years ago, we went to the finals and this year, we went to the semifinals. You can see the passion in every single game.”