There was only silence as the Harvard women’s soccer team watched 64 other teams’ names appear on the NCAA selection show yesterday, leaving the Crimson without an NCAA berth of its own for the first time since 1995.

Harvard lost out to New England schools Yale and Rhode Island for NCAA at-large berths. Rhode Island was selected over Harvard despite having a far weaker schedule and a worse record against common opponents. But URI (15-5-1) had a far better overall record than Harvard (8-7-1), a better record against teams under NCAA consideration and just as many wins as Harvard against NCAA-bound teams. That was enough for the Rams to earn the at-large berth under the NCAA’s selection criteria.

After the final bracket was displayed, Harvard coach Tim Wheaton made a brief speech praising his team, and all but a handful of players speechlessly filed out of the room.

“I believe we’re one of the top 64 teams in the country, but we put ourselves in the situation where there were enough top teams that had defeated us, and we left it to a committee to decide,” Wheaton said after most of his team had departed. “Certainly we’re disappointed.”

Seniors Beth Totman and Katie Urbanic were the last to leave the room. Their college careers, which had already been cut short by injuries, were cut even shorter upon the surprise announcement.

“[Our senior leadership] has been incredible—just great attitudes, great examples for all of us, working incredibly hard,” Wheaton said. “They deserved a little better than this to end their career, but it doesn’t change the contributions they’ve made to our program.”

“None of us expected it to be over today at all,” said co-captain Caitlin Butler. “We didn’t really expect that we would not get in behind Yale and Rhode Island. But you leave it up to an at-large bid, you never know what will happen.”

Harvard had earned at-large bids each of the last two years as a bubble team, but each of those teams had two more overall wins and more wins over other teams in the NCAA field. This year, Harvard played a tougher schedule and didn’t play as many of the marginal NCAA teams that would have provided easier victories and still helped its NCAA case.

All but one of Harvard’s losses—Washington—came against NCAA-qualifying teams. All but the loss to UConn and Washington were by a single goal. The Crimson needed just slightly better results against the difficult schedule, but couldn’t pull it off.

Harvard coach Tim Wheaton had no regrets about the schedule.

“We enjoy playing the teams we play,” he said. “We feel like we won the games we should have, mostly, and had some opportunities to win some others we didn’t take advantage of.”

Harvard has typically succeeded in scheduling all the Northeast teams that might garner NCAA berths—like Boston College, Boston University, and Hartford, so most NCAA selection decisions can be based more on head-to-head results. URI’s contention for an at-large bid was unprecedented, so Harvard did not play the Rams. So unlike past years, Harvard’s NCAA fate wasn’t as well decided on the field.

Wheaton said despite the NCAA selection result, he was still proud of this year’s team.

“The turnaround that they’ve made in terms of the important things—effort, playing as a team, representing the school well—has been huge,” he said.

Though Harvard’s record was not as strong as past years, Wheaton said he was pleased with this year’s team’s consistency in its effort relative to past seasons.