When OU junior midfielder Jordan White missed her penalty kick in overtime, the crowd at Blossom Soccer Stadium in San Antonio erupted with sheer elation.

With the missed shot, the Sooners fell to Oklahoma State, 5-4 in PKs, watching the Big 12 championship trophy slip from their grips after knocking off No. 21 Texas and No. 6 Texas A&M to get to the final round of the tournament.

The loss on Nov. 7, 2010 was heartfelt from OU’s bench, but there weren’t any drooping heads or disappointing glances from the team in crimson.

The Sooners weren’t suppose to get to the championship game, let alone hang with an OSU team that had shutout the Sooners in the two previous regular-season meetings.

Although the team came up short, Oklahoma’s 2010 season went down in the books as one of the best on record and could be the season that starts the Sooners’ accent into the soccer elite.

What began as another feeble year of desperation to crack into the volatile Big 12 conference, the Sooners, coupled with the largest recruiting class in the program’s history (12), put together a campaign that propelled the team to its first appearance in the Big 12 championship game.

“The team’s fight, heart, and the way they competed this year are things that separate this team from prior years,” head coach Nicole Nelson said.

After being picked to finish 10th in the Big 12 conference prior to the 2010 season, Oklahoma soccer came out ready to silence the speculators.

“The returners have done a tremendous job reaching out to this incoming class and developing a good chemistry early in the year,” Nelson said.

And chemistry did play a colossal role in turning the program towards prominence.

Following a 2008 season that only recorded three total wins (3-15-1), OU’s 2010 squad finished with 12 overall victories and tied the school record with five Big 12 wins.

With the success in this year’s conference rotation, the Sooners finished as the No. 4 team in the Big 12, the highest ranking in the program’s history.

“We let nothing from the outside interfere when it was time to play,” then-sophomore forward Dria Hampton said. “We made huge strides from the year before believing we could accomplish anything.”

Riding behind senior standout Whitney Palmer, OU scored 37 total goals, tying the 2005 team with the most goals scored in a single season.

Palmer became OU’s all-time leading scorer against Kansas on Oct. 10, 2010 with her 35th career goal. The Plano, Texas, native ended her collegiate stint with 38 goals and 83 points.

And for her outstanding performances, Palmer became the only player in Oklahoma’s history to earn four all-conference honors and two all-region awards.

But the players weren’t the only ones susceptible to the accolades.

In her third year at the helm of the Sooners, Nicole Nelson collected Co-Big 12 Coach of the Year honors, the only second accolade awarded to a Sooners’ head coach in the program’s history.

Nelson’s recruiting standards and ability to draw out the talents of her athletes is beginning to earn her respect from the Big 12 coaches, many of whom have perennial experience with the echelon program.

“One of the things we learned this year is that if we show up and play to the best of our abilities, there’s no one we can’t play with,” Nelson said. “We keep moving forward and we’re learning how to win.”

And the Sooners’ success in overtime games helped add to that momentum of winning. In 2010, OU finished 3-1-3 in overtime stints, including outlasting A&M 1-0 in single overtime and OSU 1-1 in double overtime in back-to-back games during the Big 12 tournament.

Previously, the last time a Sooner team claimed victory in an overtime setting was in 2005.

But the turning point of the 2010 season came during the Sooners’ first overtime victory of the season in the matchup against Colorado on Oct. 17 in Norman.

After falling behind 1-0, the Sooners rallied to force tie the game and force extra minutes. Palmer used her speed and strength to move the ball down the field, scoring just 55 seconds into overtime action.

With the win, OU earned a third-place ranking in the conference standings, securing a spot in the Big 12 tournament.

Eventually, the Sooners’ regular season record (12-8-3) earned the team an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, where OU was ousted by Washington, 4-0, in the first round.

It was the first trip to the national tournament since 2003, something that OU players wants to repeat more often than none.

“I don’t think being in a conference championship and just going to the first round is an achievement,” Hampton said. “We should do that year in and year out.”

Now that the Sooners have experience in the postseason, look for coach Nelson and her young team to take to the high roads in 2011 as they get set for another run to the NCAA postseason.

Teams that continue to punch their tickets have earned the right to be called the nation’s elite. And after last year’s run, OU needs to continue to do what coach Nelson has said her team is doing: learning how to win.

It’s easy to say to how good the 2010 Sooner team was based on individual accomplishments and accolades, but without stringing together winning seasons, OU won’t find itself in the nation’s top conversations anytime soon.

And contending with this year’s success is something the 2011 squad better be ready for come August.