A few minutes after 11 p.m. Sunday, the Carolina RailHawks’ inaugural season came to a close.

It ended much like it started — with a whimper.

The RailHawks lost the second leg of their two-leg, aggregate-score quarterfinal 1-0 in Seattle, this after losing the first leg 2-0 Friday in Cary.

Carolina opened the year with an 0-5 showing in the preseason (with three goals scored) and an 0-1-3 start to the regular season (with two goals scored).

Though their first appearance in the USL First Division playoffs was a dud, that certainly is not the case for the season as a whole.

There were some high points — beating reigning champion Chicago 1-0 in the U.S. Open Cup, clinching the USL-1’s final playoff spot in the season’s final game. And some low points — the entire month of July when Carolina went 0-5-2 in league play.

The fact that Carolina made the playoffs in its first season is a good sign for the future. The RailHawks also made it to the semifinals of the U.S. Open Cup.

The RailHawks were fifth in USL-1 in attendance. They drew 71,735 attendees to SAS Soccer Park for 14 league matches, which translates to an average attendance of 5,124. The league average was 4,777.

The RailHawks’ smallest crowd of the season — 923 for Friday’s match against Seattle — was still better than Miami’s average for the season (916). Montreal led the league with 154,497 total and 11,036 per game.

Overall, Carolina drew 99,810 fans for 20 matches in Cary (the RailHawks also played four U.S. Open Cup games and two exhibitions at home), where they went 9-5-6 overall.

Take all those things, and 2007 was a very good year for the RailHawks.

In order to make 2008 better, Carolina must address its biggest on-field weakness — scoring.

Fans want to see goals, and they didn’t see a whole lot from the RailHawks this year.

Carolina scored 24 times in 28 USL-1 matches. Only California, also a first-year club, was more futile. The Victory struck for just 17 goals.

They say you can’t lose games when you don’t allow a goal, which is true, but you can’t win any games when you don’t score.

In 21 games (including the playoffs) against the seven teams that finished ahead of the RailHawks, Carolina struck just 11 times.

Against the three teams that finished below Carolina, the RailHawks scored 13 goals in nine games.

Addressing the situation is one thing, finding the solution is another.

It’s not like 20 goal scorers are falling out of trees. Seattle’s Sebastien Le Toux and Montreal’s Charles Gbeke tied for the USL-1 goal scoring lead this year — and they scored 20 times between them.

RailHawks coach Scott Schweitzer insisted throughout the year that the scoring was going to come. He had no doubt.

It never did.

There were a few flashes of brilliance — Kupono Low’s eighth-minute strike against Minnesota in the season opener, Connally Edozien’s long-range blast at Vancouver and Edozien’s hat trick at Charleston immediately come to mind — but it never happened consistently.

And that’s why Carolina’s results were so inconsistent. The RailHawks didn’t win more than two games in a row or have an unbeaten streak longer than three games all year.

If the organization keeps the roster mostly in tact, then there has to be a tactical change. Schweitzer favors the 4-3-2-1, or Christmas Tree, formation. The two withdrawn forwards work off the one man up top.

But all year, anytime that one forward pushed up, there was hardly anyone there for support. And there were usually two or three more opposing defenders than Carolina had attackers going to goal.

The RailHawks have no concerns with defense and goalkeeping. There’s a good core of players that helped make the 2007 season good, and one that should make 2008 better.