The wait is over.

The Harvard field hockey team has earned its first NCAA Tournament berth since 1991.

The Crimson (12-5, 6-1 Ivy) will fly down to Winston-Salem, N.C., in the next few days to play fourth-seeded Wake Forest (16-3) on Saturday. The time has not yet been determined.

The team found out the news at approximately eight o'clock last night. The players and coaches had gathered together in a player's room to watch the selection show broadcast live over the Internet.

"There's so much emotion right now," co-captain Maisa Badawy said. "We were really the bubble team, and we didn't know either way what was going to happen. We all thought we should be together. We wanted to find out all together, all at once."

Harvard is the first Ivy team ever to make a NCAA Tournament at-large. The expansion of the field from 12 to 16 teams in 1999 helped to make tonight's good fortune possible.

Judging by the latest National Field Hockey Coaches Association (NFCHA) poll, the No. 16 Crimson was squarely on the bubble, in need of one of the eight at-large berths in the 16-team tournament.

But the poll had no relationship to the actual selection results. Harvard was effectively the 13th seed in the tournament. Only the top four teams are officially seeded.