HANOVER — Only 10 seconds after Harvard fullback Chloe Headland had kicked the ball out of play, the confetti cannons began firing. As specks of red filled the air and slowly fell to the grass at Burnham Field, the Dartmouth women’s rugby team gathered in a huddle near its bench.

The Big Green’s quest for an undefeated season came up just short in a 19-12 loss to the Crimson in the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association (NIRA) Division I title game. Saturday’s clash marked the third consecutive NIRA championship meeting between the two rivals, Harvard having now won back-to-back years.

“This team means so much to me,” said junior wing Katelyn Walker, who found the try zone late in the first half. “There’s no other group of girls I’d rather play with. We’re able to play with a lot of love and passion. Obviously, you hope that it goes the other way, but we really put our hearts out there.”

The two teams played a scoreless opening 20 minutes before Headland broke the deadlock in the 23rd minute, darting into the try zone and then tacking on the ensuing conversion to give Harvard an early 7-0 lead. Josephine Mignone’s try just seven minutes later handed the Crimson a 12-0 advantage.

Dartmouth coach Katie Dowty, now in her 10th season helming the program, identified the flow of play and penalty count as two differentiators in Saturday’s match. She felt as though the Big Green “applied a huge amount of pressure,” especially in the opening 20 minutes, but weren’t able to come away with the necessary points.

In the waning moments of the first half, though, Dartmouth finally got on the scoreboard courtesy of a connection between first-year center Annie Henrich and Walker. After Walker sprinted into the try zone, Harvard entered the intermission holding a 12-5 advantage.

Senior scrumhalf/wing Sadie Schier said the team knew it could engineer a second-half comeback against the Crimson. In a regular-season matchup during its national title-winning campaign in 2022, Dartmouth erased a 16-point second-half deficit to eke out a two-point victory. The Big Green were only down seven points Saturday night. Why couldn’t a comeback be realized?

Dowty, who said she’s “never seen this team quit,” wasn’t surprised that her squad equalized less than six minutes into the second half. After first-year center Vasiti Turagavou darted past multiple Harvard defenders to get near the try line, sophomore lock Cindy Taulava powered in for five points. Henrich’s conversion tied the game up, 12-12.

“We’ve never had a team so connected, so dynamic and have so many threats and options,” Schier said. “We’ve never played this type of rugby, this high-level rugby before, and that’s a testament to players wanting to work hard and wanting to be there for each other.”

But Taulava’s score was the last time Dartmouth would find the try zone. Harvard reclaimed a lead in the 58th minute it would never relinquish, taking advantage of a Big Green penalty.

When these two teams met in Cambridge, Mass., in mid-October, it was the Big Green who clung to a seven-point advantage ahead of stoppage time, staving off a potential Crimson comeback by maintaining possession. A month later, Dartmouth — which entered as the tournament’s top seed after compiling a 7-0 regular season record — was unable to mount a late revival.

“They went into this game knowing they would die for each other out there on the field,” Dowty said of her team. “And that’s a great feeling to go into a final match.”

While the Big Green’s 15s season has fully wrapped up — the program’s quest for its fourth NIRA title pushed to next fall — attention now turns to the sevens campaign in the spring and the final run for the senior class.

“There’s nowhere I’d rather spend the last four years of my college career than at Dartmouth,” said Schier, one of the team’s three captains alongside Walker and fellow senior Asialeata Meni. “No matter anything that we’ve gone through, it’s always been love. … I found people who are going to push me and who are going to keep fighting for me in the future. And I know that I have the biggest support system, beyond any other program I’ve ever seen, as I go forward out of here.

“But we’ve still got sevens season.”

Alex Cervantes can be reached at acervantes@vnews.com or 603-727-7302.