At the beginning of this season, the soccer players marked the end of each practice by yelling their goal into the air: “Big 12 Champs!”

But over the course of the season, that chant faded. Eventually, it wasn’t heard at all. When the year ended, Kansas stood tied for eighth place in the conference and barely slipped into the Big 12 Tournament. The team was eliminated in the first round. Hopes for a berth in the NCAA Tournament, which the team had achieved last year, vanished as well.

“Last year, we did those things, so I felt like we reasonably could do those things again,” senior forward Kim Boyer said. “Unfortunately we didn’t get any of those goals.”

Last year’s team made the semifinals of the Big 12 Tournament and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2004.

But Kansas failed to come close to last year’s success. Now, at the season’s close, the team must address several questions. First, why did it fall so far short of its goal? Second, how it can change next year? Some players put it down to inconsistency or bad luck, but it’s hard to put a finger on what exactly caused them to fall short of their own expectations.

Sure, the team had some injuries, most notably those to senior forward Shannon McCabe and freshman Amy Grow. But those injuries weren’t much different from a typical season.

Sure, the team had some exhausting road stretches. On one occasion, the team played two road games for three weeks in a row. However, every Big 12 team faced that obstacle.

Boyer said she thought the team lacked a must-win intensity until the last three games of the season. According to her, that sentiment starts at the top.

“Once we started losing and getting into conference play, I don’t feel like we changed anything to motivate us or do something different to instill that drive to win,” she said. “I can blame myself, too, because I could have spoken up, too. I think we needed to do some team reflecting sometimes.”

It isn’t like the Jayhawks’ opponents completely outperformed them, however. Six of the team’s eight losses were by just one goal. Freshman midfielder Shelby Williamson chalked the losses up to exhaustion and bad fortune.

“I think we just got really unlucky with some stuff, and we got tired,” Williamson said. “You could tell, like on Sunday games, definitely.”

Whether the sub-par season was due to consistency, leadership, fitness or just bad luck, it’s nevertheless behind the team now. The biggest change for next year will be the absence of the five seniors who formed the team’s core this year. The team will have to readjust to life without Monica Dolinsky and Shannon McCabe, who have worked their way onto the program’s top 10 points and goals lists.

“We’re losing some key players, but hopefully we have a class come in that can fill that,” said Williamson.

Next year’s class won’t be announced until early 2010, but coach Mark Francis already has a promising class of freshmen from this year that will provide a new foundation for the team. Freshmen Williamson, Whitney Berry and Sarah Robbins should be joined next year by classmate Amy Grow, who sat out this year with an injury.

— Edited by Brenna M. T. Daldorph