The Colorado football team showed up to work Monday morning and instantly felt the void without Dominiq Ponder in the room.
“Yeah, this morning it was just hard to go in the quarterback room thinking like, ‘Damn, Dom won’t be in there,’” CU offensive coordinator Brennan Marion said as he choked back tears. “You know, you see somebody every day, every morning. We meet every day at 5:30, 5 o’clock, so … we’ll just save a spot for him in the room.”
Early on Sunday morning, the Buffs lost Ponder, 23, who was killed in a single-vehicle crash in Boulder County. The team met late Sunday afternoon and decided as a group to kick off spring practices as planned Monday morning.
“We decided as a team Dom wouldn’t miss a day,” senior safety Ben Finneseth said. “He wouldn’t miss a day of workouts and that’s what he would have wanted for us. He would have said, ‘Life’s gotta move on, we got championships to win, and we still have goals and the clocks are still rolling, the world’s still going to spin.’
“Obviously there was a lot of emotions (Sunday) and a lot of guys breaking down and tearing up, but we gotta keep working. That was the biggest thing. We gotta be there for each other, gotta keep working.”
A junior, walk-on quarterback from Opa Locka, Florida, Ponder was preparing for his third season with the Buffs. He appeared in two games and threw just one pass in his two seasons at CU.
While Ponder wasn’t a star on game days, he was a star in the locker room and one of the most popular players on the team. Ponder, a 6-foot-5, 200-pound quarterback with a strong arm, was described by teammates as a fun-loving leader whose work ethic was strong.
Offensive lineman Yahya Attia said he never had serious conversations with Ponder, “because it was just all fun and you was just happy around him.”
Running back DeKalon Taylor bonded with Ponder over tattoos, and always respected how hard Ponder worked.
“He always came to work, always had a smile on his face, always wanted to get extra work,” Taylor said.
Because of that, the Buffs went to work Monday, despite heavy hearts.
Head coach Deion Sanders gathered the team for a meeting Sunday, and provided them with resources for counseling if needed. He also put it to the team to decide whether to practice.
“(Ponder) was always smiling, always laughing, always goofy, playing around,” cornerback RJ Johnson said. “He would definitely want us to be here today practicing and having a smile on our face. He wouldn’t want anybody to be down because Dom was never down.”
It wasn’t easy, though.
Taylor said practice was “a little heavy at first,” before Marion brought the guys in for a huddle, started a little chant and then broke the huddle by yelling, “Dom!”
“It was almost like a boost of energy, like he was here with us,” Taylor said. “I thought it was a high effort practice.”
A high level of effort is what Ponder brought to the field every day, according to teammates.
Finneseth, one of only 17 players who had been teammates with Ponder since the start of the 2024 season, called Ponder, “Just a gritty, competitive dude.”
Ponder played at Bethune-Cookman and Georgia Tech before coming to CU, accepting his role as a backup and striving for more.
“He was a talented guy and his highs were high,” Finneseth said. “He was a great player, but what stood out to me was just his competitiveness and his passion.”
In time, Marion said, the football program will determine the right way to honor Ponder. On Monday, however, they honored him by playing football.
“That’s what the guys wanted to do today in honor of him,” Marion said. “I was just proud of the guys for going out there with tears in their eyes, taking a deep breath. I was just proud of the guys for actually going out there and practicing today and toughening it out.”
Coaches are usually tough on players in practice and grade practice film with a critical eye. Marion said on this day, “We coached differently.”
“We didn’t coach with the same urgency as far as screaming at guys and losing our mind,” he said. “We coached like you would coach your child today. … For them to go out there was amazing today.”
With 14 more practices this spring, plus weight room work, the Buffs will continue to go out there and work, and they’ll do so with Ponder on their minds and in their hearts.
“It sucks. Obviously, you lose a brother and to some of us like myself, it’s more than a brother,” said an emotional Finneseth, who became close with Ponder.
“He lit up every room that he walked into and he brought the best in the people around him. And so he’s going to be missed.”