"It's been difficult," midfielder Will Johnson said. "I didn't sleep a minute last night."
Johnson and fellow midfielder Andy Williams both were en route to World Cup qualifying games - they will play against one another, for Canada and Jamaica, respectively - and neither enjoyed any sleep before catching their flight Sunday morning.
Williams would have had to go, anyway, even if RSL had beaten the New York Red Bulls in the Major League Soccer Western Conference final and advanced to MLS Cup next weekend, but he desperately would have loved to encounter the challenge.
As it was, RSL lost 1-0 after its barrage of shots in the second half maddeningly failed to find the back of the net. The team hit the post three times and knocked countless other shots just high or wide, leaving the players solemn and emotional in the locker room after the game.
"I had a very strong feeling that I wasn't done," coach Jason Kreis said. "I wasn't done, I wasn't ready to be done, and I think all the players in the locker room feel the exact same way. So I hope that we go into the offseason obviously feeling very good about a lot of things, but I hope that we go into the offseason a little bit angry about the fact that we probably could have and should have gone a little further."
That, by itself, illustrates just how far RSL came in its fourth season.
Entering the season after three previous disastrous ones, the team played down expectations, insisting that it was focusing on simply getting better, and letting the points sort themselves out along the way. In the end, though, even after its stunning stretch run and playoff drive, it wound up disappointed.
"The goal before the season was to make the playoffs, and we sort of went one step better," Johnson said. "But that still wasn't good enough for us."
All of the players have said they have laid a good foundation for next season, which Kreis has said was the one in which he expected his team to truly become a title contender.
"We learned throughout the season, we grew throughout the season and we learned from most of our mistakes and that kind of helped us," Williams said. "So hopefully you learn from this year and put it forward to next year."
The roster should return largely intact, too, though the team holds options on the contracts of several players - team officials have not said which - and expects to lose a good player in the expansion draft later this month. The team is allowed to protect just 11 of its 28 players, but it can lose only one to the expansion Seattle Sounders.
"We have a team this year with too many good players not to lose one that we like very, very much," Kreis said. "That's going to be a difficult scenario."
One clear priority is signing central defender Jamison Olave to a long-term deal, and the team said it already has extended an offer.
It also will be interesting to see what becomes of backup goalkeeper Chris Seitz, a highly regarded former No. 3 draft pick who did not play at all this season behind veteran starter Nick Rimando.
In any case, Kreis said there was no goal he set for the team that it did not reach.
"They accomplished every goal I had written down," he said. "I made a list of a lot of scenarios that I think great teams can conquer, and I think we conquered all of them."
