STOCKTON, Calif. – California field hockey's season came to an end at the hands of its Bay Area rival as the Golden Bears fell to the Stanford Cardinal, 2-0, in the America East Championship semifinals Saturday afternoon in Stockton, Calif.
 
With the loss, Cal's 2016 campaign comes to an end with a 5-13 overall record.
 
"It's a loss but it's a huge step forward. Getting in to the second round shows our trajectory," said head coach Shellie Onstead. "You have to be from inside the program to know how much we overachieved given some of our challenges around goalkeeping in the last third of the season. Dani (Mentink) was awesome, and when she got healthy she was everything we needed. We really had to scramble and I think it's going to make us a better team in the future."
 
Cal reached the America East semifinals for the first time since the Bears joined the conference in 2015. Last year, Cal fell to Maine in overtime, 2-1, in the AE quarterfinals in Albany, N.Y.
 
Stanford's Lucy Dikeou scored both goals against the Bears, while Moore led Cal with two shots on goal. Sydney Earle and Alie Zimmer each tallied shots on frame, with all six of Cal's total shots coming in the second half of the contest. For the game, Stanford led Cal 14-6 in shots and 5-2 in penalty corners.
 
The semifinal's first half was a quiet one as the Cal defense kept the Cardinal at bay, denying four penalty corner tries while Mentink tallied two saves. Meanwhile, the Bears' first-half offense failed to record a shot against Stanford, who held the 6-0 lead in shots after the first 35 minutes.
 
"What we did well is that we played a poor first half and stayed in the game," Onstead said.
At halftime, I considered it good news and bad news. The bad news is that we were playing poorly, but the good news is that it was even. I thought we came out with a little bit more in the second half and made it competitive."
 
Stanford's Dikeou broke the game open in the 54th minute, playing a ball to the front of the cage before pushing it in as Mentink dove to save it.
 
"We've gotta answer," Onstead urged from the sidelines.
 
Down 1-0 for the second time in as many days, Cal stayed composed and the Bears got their first good look at the cage in the 58th minute on a penalty corner. Melina Moore injected the ball toward All-Conference honoree Mara Gutierrez, but the Cardinal blocked her attempt at the goal.
 
With less than 10 minutes to go, the Bears pulled Mentink in favor of a kicking back in an attempt to generate more offense. Thirty-six seconds later, Dikeou found the back of the cage once again to add an insurance goal for her Cardinal.
 
"I thought it might be a one-goal game and I also thought we were so confident and experienced in playing with a kicking back that I rolled the dice and didn't think we'd give up that goal," Onstead said. "You could see after that goal, we snapped out of it and it was just a little bit of a disengaged restart. Those are the little things that make a big difference."
 
As the final 10 minutes on the clock ticked down, Cal's offense continued to push with shots by Moore, Earle and Gabi Jimenez,  before ultimately falling in the shutout.
 
HEAD COACH SHELLIE ONSTEAD'S TAKE
On season overall:
"It's a loss but it's a huge step forward. Getting in to the second round shows our trajectory. You have to be from inside the program to know how much we overachieved given some of our challenges around goalkeeping in the last third of the season. Dani (Mentink) was awesome, and when she got healthy she was everything we needed. We really had to scramble and I think it's going to make us a better team in the future. We've got eight leaving us and we started six freshmen. We got the leadership we needed from the seniors and the effort from our young players."
 
"We overachieved when things got tough and if I had to compare it to a year ago when we had some pretty significant injuries, this speaks to a lot more maturity and growth in the difficult times. That's the mental toughness that ultimately leads to conference championships, and I'm happy about that."
 
On contributions of senior class:
"We're way better than we were at this point a year ago. Everybody just needs to keep faith and face forward. I couldn't be more proud of the seniors, and more impressed with the diversity of that group. The way they embraced it and got us through a really dark time in our program with the challenges of a lack of field and travel. I don't know that we would have gone this far without them. I really put that on them and helping us get through a really tough time.­"
 
STANFORD'S GOALS
53:25 – Lucy Dikeou
60:29 – Lucy Dikeou