A final flourish for a cornerstone class

Though a substantial amount of time had passed since his team's NCAA Tournament run ended in Stillwater, Okla., Brian Pensky still spoke cautiously and evenly as he recounted his team's loss.

"Here we are, just a few hours removed from the game," the Terrapins women's soccer coach said Sunday. "I don't think anybody's feeling too good right now."

Almost three hours earlier, the Terps had launched a flurry of late shots at the Oklahoma State goal in a desperate attempt at an equalizer, but the No. 2 seed Cowgirls held on for a 1-0 victory in the Sweet 16.

Midfielder Olivia Wagner, a junior, said her teammates reacted differently following the sudden end to a promising season. Still, one emotion was common: sadness for the Terps seniors who had played their last minutes.

The 2011 season proved to cement the legacy of the 11 seniors. After all, the Terps ending their careers are the last of Pensky's recruiting classes to have suffered through a losing season. It was only four years ago, in 2008, that the Terps finished 7-10-1 and missed the NCAA Tournament.

Leaving the team are some of the program's all-time standouts, including forward Ashley Grove, who ranks fifth in points (64), tied for sixth in goals (23) and tied for seventh in assists (18) and goalkeeper Yewande Balogun, who started the most games at the position in team history (67) and is tied for the second-most shutouts (19).

But despite the program's development over the past four years from an ACC pushover to one of the nation's top programs, Pensky remained uneasy about his team's experience this season.

"Last year, I remember having an email exchange with Olivia Wagner's father, and I said to him, I feel like Olivia Wagner and her class were cheated out of the bad years because perspective in life is so important, and those kids don't have perspective," Pensky said in September. "They've done nothing but win here."

With three of four classes that had known only winning ways, Pensky often looked to his seniors to provide a thick skin when dealing with adversity, something they dealt with in 2008 when the team went through a stretch in which it lost eight of 10 games.

Coming off a year in which the Terps went 18-2-3 and earned the program's first No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, Pensky and his seniors needed that resolve.

After a 6-0-1 start to the season during which the Terps tied Stanford in the only game the Cardinal hasn't won so far this year, the Terps endured a two-month stretch in which they failed to win back-to-back games.

After wins at Cornell on Sept. 4 and against American on Sept. 7, the Terps were unable to record victories in consecutive games until Nov. 11 and Nov. 18, when the Terps defeated La Salle and Auburn in the NCAA Tournament.

"We felt like … that suffering through those tough times were just going to make us stronger and just going to make us better," Pensky said Sunday. "I really felt that."

On the brink of missing the ACC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament in mid-October, the Terps found a turning point. After painful losses to Miami and Duke, the Terps faced North Carolina, a team they had beaten only once before in 32 tries. After surrendering an early goal, the Terps came back for a 2-1 overtime victory on senior night to secure an ACC Tournament spot.

"I think it was at a time when we were doubting if we were actually a good team," said defender Lydia Hastings, a senior co-captain. "That win just put us over the edge. The non-believers started to believe that we could do something big."

While the Terps were still able to advance to the Sweet 16 for the third time in program history — the furthest they have advanced in the NCAA Tournament — they still fell short of their preseason goal of a national championship.

"You can be upset and disappointed and frustrated and mad and pissed that it's over, which we all feel," Pensky said. "We set our sights and our goals very, very high this fall, and we didn't accomplish those."

And while 11 seniors leave College Park without a national championship, they were still able to leave a legacy of helping the Terps program turn the corner and join the nation's elite.