This weekend the Gators will suffer sport’s most frustrating experience: staying home while their opponents duke it out in the postseason.

SF State’s men’s soccer team lost all postseason hope with a 2-1 overtime loss to CSU Monterey Bay last Wednesday. The defeat mathematically dumped them from playoff contention, making Friday’s 2-1 loss to Cal State L.A. academic.

The results capped an end-of-season slump that saw the Gators lose six and tie two of their last eight games. They finished seventh overall in the California Collegiate Athletic Association conference with a 7-9-2 overall record.

Only the top four conference teams play postseason ball.

“I know with a full-strength team we could’ve beaten Monterey Bay, we could’ve beaten L.A., and those are two playoff teams,” coach Joe Hunter said. “The guys went down fighting, but it’s a difficult sport to play when you don’t have all your resources.”

After posting a winning record halfway through the season, the Gators lost two key players to injuries—assist-leader Wes Whitt and top goal-scorer Dylan Glass—triggering the downturn in form. But Hunter wasn’t all about excuses.

“It’s been a rather peculiar year,” he said. “You could put all your eggs into one basket and say because we lost Dylan and Wes, our team struggled down the stretch. While that’s partly true, I hope the [other players] learn a lesson and know this can happen any time, and players have to step up.”

But Hunter heaped praise on six outgoing seniors who played their last games as Gators Friday, and admitted it was a heartbreaking finale.

Team captain and senior Matt Pedersen, who scored the lone Gator goal in Friday's loss, agreed.

“It was an emotional experience,” he said. “I was hoping to finish [with] a win so I could leave the field with a big smile on my face and have no tears, but with the loss that didn’t happen.”

Pedersen, a broadcasting major, graduates this winter and is now looking to land a job as a play-by-play sports announcer. But he said he’ll miss that Gator soccer camaraderie.

“All the stuff that goes into playing on a team as a soccer player, like spring training and all those games, it really stays with you,” he said. “Every game we played in [this year], we were pretty much in them all. It just sucks to finish the season on a losing streak.”

With the 2007 season behind him, Hunter said he’s now focused on next year’s team. He wants to ensure the 2008 Gators have enough depth in the squad to cope with injuries.

On his recruiting wish list are both a holding and a “creative, attacking” midfielder, two central defenders, two attackers and a new goalkeeper.

“We’ll look for starting players in every position,” he said.

This week the coach will meet with players individually to discuss their seasons—and their futures as Gators.

But for now, Hunter chose to reflect on two positive experiences—one at the start of the campaign, and one at the end—that serve as bookends to the 2007 season, and hopefully, he said, motivation for next year.

“The game against UC San Diego where we pulled out a 2-0 victory, I thought we had something special there,” he said. “Then, in that very last game where Matt Pedersen scored and everyone in the locker got kind of teary-eyed, I felt not only proud for them, but also, ‘God, it could have been so much more.’”