What must the Penn State women's soccer team do to pry its way into the hearts of pollsters? Or for that matter, just gain the recognition it deserves?

Although the team's season ended last Friday night with a 2-1 loss at No. 1 North Carolina, erasing its dreams of a national championship this year, the Nittany Lions deserve to be part of the Final Four in Dallas just as much as the other teams.

Even North Carolina women's soccer coach Anson Dorrance has said that the caliber of the Penn State program is that of a Final Four team.

And yet the team won't be going to Dallas this weekend. Although that fact can't change, it should at least be recognized that the Lions could hold their own against North Carolina, Portland, Santa Clara or Florida.

Penn State has been solid all season, ending with a 21-4-1 record. Even when key defenders Leigh Hamilton and Megan Mills were injured during the Iowa game on Oct. 12, the Lions' depth on the bench kept them in the game. In fact, the bench has been a key to the Penn State team all season. All but one player, a freshman goalkeeper, has seen action.

And let's not forget the other key players on the team. Junior forward Christie Welsh is second in the nation in scoring with 25 goals (Florida's Abby Wambach leads with 31). Welsh is also tied for first in assists with 18. She has been a force to be reckoned with all season for the Lions. And her efforts paid off. Welsh was named the Big Ten Player of the Year for the third season in a row, and on Tuesday was named the winner of the 2001 Hermann Trophy, the equivalent to the Heisman Trophy in college football. Welsh was a candidate for the award last year and could just as easily become the recipient next year.

We're also talking about the player who participated with the U.S. National Team in the Algarve Cup in Portugal in March of this year and was a member of the U.S. Under-21 Team in Mexico in May and Norway in July. She is also the player who will forgo her spring semester at Penn State next year to try and join the professional ranks of the WUSA.

But Welsh isn't the only player that can and will go pro.

While he wouldn't name names, former Penn State women's soccer coach Pat Farmer, current coach of the WUSA's N.Y. Power, said in a phone interview this week that he can see five or six players on the Penn State team that could possibly go to the big leagues in the future.

Now that their collegiate careers are over, senior goalkeeper Emily Oleksiuk and senior defenders Bonnie Young and Megan Mills all have the possibility to be drafted later this year.

It takes more than one person to make a team and Penn State knows that. It was teamwork that helped the Lions become the Big Ten champions for the fourth consecutive year and the winner of the Big Ten Tournament for the third time in the last four years.

Before the start of the NCAA Tournament, Penn State was ranked seventh in the nation. One would think, therefore, that come seeding time the Lions would be one of the top eight seeds.

Wrong.

Penn State got shafted.

It wasn't ranked seventh or even eighth for that matter.

But the Lions got their chance to prove just where they should have been ranked all along when they went to eighth-seeded and No. 13 Connecticut in the third round of the NCAA Tournament on Nov. 24. They beat the Huskies 2-0 to advance to the quarterfinals.

And then of course came the game that ended the season on a fluke goal with about 10 minutes left. According to a press release after the game, Oleksiuk came out of the goal to clear the ball. She arrived at the ball at the exact same time as Tar Heels forward Alyssa Ramsey. Oleksiuk kicked the ball to clear it, as Ramsey turned her back. At that second, the ball hit off of Ramsey's butt and caromed into the goal to end the game.

Had Oleksiuk cleared the ball, who knows how the game would have ended? And the fact is, it could have just as easily been Penn State that came out on top. The Lions missed their chance to prove the pollsters wrong this season, and that's unfortunate -- unfortunate because everything points to the fact that they deserved a chance at the title. But that's just how things go sometimes.

And for Penn State that's just how things have gone all season -- and now the season's all gone.