RIO DE JANEIRO _ Some players were in tears. Others, like Hope Solo, were angry _ which we'll get back to a minute.
But most members of the U.S. women's soccer team were simply in shock after being eliminated from the Olympic Games by Sweden on penalty kicks in Friday's quarterfinals.
Coach Jill Ellis was feeling all those emotions when she rose to speak to her team in the locker room afterward. Her message: feel the pain, then get over it.
"I said to the players no words at this point are going to take away how they feel at this moment," Ellis recounted. "But the great thing about sports is there is another game. You have to move forward.
"You have to feel and let yourself feel. But at some point there'll be games ahead of us. And this will be motivation to continue and want to grow and push the bar."
The U.S. had already pushed the bar pretty high before tumbling off it Friday, when they made their earliest exit ever from an Olympic soccer tournament, playing Sweden to a 1-1 draw through 120 minutes, then losing in the shootout. The U.S., the top-ranked team in the world and the three-time defending Olympic champion, had played in the final of the previous five Summer Games, winning four of them.
And after capturing a Women's World Cup title last summer in Canada, Ellis' mission was to make the Americans the first team to win a world and Olympic title in consecutive years.
The team came up well short of that goal. Yet as she walked to the team bus, co-captain Carli Lloyd had already begun processing Ellis' message.
"That was disappointing, but what are you going to do?" she said. "I know my head is held high. I'm proud of the team. We can learn from this moment, make us hungrier, make us dig deeper.
"And you best believe that in 2019 we're going to win a World Cup."
That was the tournament Ellis was pointing toward when she chose a roster for Rio that included just seven Olympic veterans. One of the new players, 18-year-old forward Mallory Pugh, is the second-youngest American women to make an Olympic roster and the youngest-ever to score an Olympic goal.
Pugh's future looks bright, as does that of forward Crystal Dunn, another Olympic rookie who also played well in Brazil. So even in defeat, the U.S. team may have made progress.
"We're in the process of an evolution. And we took some big steps," Ellis said. "It was to be determined whether we were there yet."
There will probably be more changes coming.
Solo, the goalkeeper and oldest player on the team at 35, may not last until the next World Cup. Although she's talked about playing in that tournament, she's also talked of retiring to start a family. And after winning three Olympic gold medals, a World Cup title and setting all-time records for appearances (202), wins (153) and shutouts (102), there would appear to be little reason for her to stick around until 2019.
She's also coming off a very bad week. After playing one of the best games of her career in group play against France, she gave up two goals on set pieces to Colombia _ including one on a shot that inexplicably bounced off her hands and through her legs _ conceded a goal to Sweden, then saved just one of five penalty-kicks in the shootout.
After the game she really fell apart, calling the Swedes "cowards" for hunkering down and playing defensively rather than trying to match the Americans in a free-flowing game of soccer.
"The best team did not win today," Solo said.
On Saturday, U.S. Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati told Sports Illustrated that Solo's comments "were highly inappropriate and not in line with the expectations of U.S. Soccer or the ideals of the Olympic movement."
Gone are the days when the U.S. women's team could simply roll out the ball and intimidate opponents or dominate tournaments. Seven of the world's top 10 teams were in the 12-nation Olympic tournament. The U.S. beat one in France and played another, Sweden, to a draw before being knocked out of the Olympic tournament in the shootout.
And Ellis said that, too, is progress.
"The game, the sport, is so far ahead," said Ellis, whose team is unbeaten this year at 16-0-3. "It's just constantly growing. It's at a place now where they're parity, there's resources, there's coaching.
"All the things you now need behind the scenes to be successful are being funded and being supported."
