"One more …"

What started out as the motto early on in the Cal women's soccer team's season turned into an intangible by its end.

The Bears' 2008 was plagued by that "one more goal" that they never quite put away, that "one more clearance" to secure the game that never got to safety, and that "one more play" that could have decided the game, but didn't.

"Towards the end of the season, we could barely get one," sophomore Megan Jesolva said. "And you can't get one more, if you don't already have one."

In the beginning of the year, Cal had extremely high hopes after a convincing performance in a loss to Stanford in penalty kicks of the second round of the 2007 NCAA Tournament.

In fact, Jesolva even had a dream that the Bears had won the 2008 tournament only days before the first game of the season. As wishful as the dream may seem now, the NSCAA coaches poll didn't think it to be too radical of a possibility, as it placed the Bears at No. 17 at the outset.

Yet in only the second game of the season, unranked Cal State Fullerton would prove that the Bears' hopes were more of a stretch than anyone had expected.

"We had the potential to make my dream come true," Jesolva said. "But when we can't execute the information that has been given to us, then we aren't going to win."

Trailing 2-0, the Titans found a complacent Cal squad in the second half and went to work.

After the Bears missed countless offensive opportunities to put the game out of reach with that "one more goal," Fullerton was able to climb back in for a 3-2 overtime victory.

As it turned out, that game illustrated some of the recurring themes that were detrimental to Cal's 10-9-1 season-botched offensive opportunities, set pieces, and the tendency to be complacent when leading.

The Bears typically came out strong in the first half, scoring 17 goals in the opening period to their opponents' five. Even more impressive is the fact that Cal's backline did not give up a goal in the first half for the first 12 games.

"We were most vulnerable in the second half," Jesolva said. " That was the strategy other teams had against us-hold us off until the second half when we would get tired."

And the Bears' second-half effort was not a well-kept secret, as their opponents exposed them for 20 goals in the second 45.

"We weren't deep enough and weren't fully prepared players," McGuire said. "And as we got tired our ability to possess the ball deserted us. We would begin to chase the game and spaces would appear for other teams to take opportunities."

The depth issue was compounded by injuries to key players like Valerie Barnes and Lisa Kevorkian, as well as absences due to National Team appearances by leading scorer Alex Morgan, leading assist-getter Jesolva, and freshman standout Katrin Omarsdottir.

And to top it off, 10 active players on Cal's roster were freshmen.

"We are a young team and it showed," McGuire said. "And our inexperience did not serve us well in big matches."

The Bears went 0-7 against ranked opponents in 2008. Although Cal often hung with the nation's best, the goal differential-three for, 15 against-told the story.

"We had an opportunity to win a lot of games," McGuire said. "Our mentality was that we could score against anyone. But against the strongest teams we didn't generate the necessary offense to win."

So when the Bears jumped out to an early 1-0 lead against No. 2 seed Florida in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, it seemed as though their luck might change. But as had happened so many times earlier in the season, that "one more goal" never came.

The Gators capitalized and scored the game-winner in the second half for a 2-1 victory to truncate the Bears turbulent run.

Jesolva, only a sophomore herself, believes that her youthful Cal club will have a lot to do in the offseason, if they are going to get back to where they were at the start of this season.

"We are going to have to dig ourselves out of a hole that we should have never been in," she said. "We need to bring back that fire."

Tags: CAL WOMEN'S SOCCER, NEIL MCGUIRE, NIKKI SCHREY, MEGAN JESOLVA, NKECHI KANU, VALERIE BARNES