Harvard Women's Soccer Has High Hopes Entering the 2026 Season

The Harvard women’s soccer team will open its season at home against Stony Brook University this Thursday evening, beginning a stretch of non-conference play before battling against its Ivy League foes.

The Crimson will look to rebound after a 2025 season defined by injuries and streaky play. Despite the challenges, the gritty team still sat atop the Ancient Eight standings over halfway through the conference slate. However, late struggles knocked Harvard out of a spot in the Ivy League Tournament.

The team will vie to return to the conference playoffs, which take place at the home of the top-seeded Ancient Eight team in mid-November. The Crimson has qualified for two of the three Ivy League Tournaments, winning the inaugural edition in 2023.

Under head coach Chris Hamblin – who has led the program since 2016 – Harvard reached the NCAA tournament for three straight seasons from 2021 to 2023 and advanced to the second round twice, before missing out in each of the past two seasons.

Before competing for the Ancient Eight title, the team will face what Hamblin described as one of its most competitive non-conference schedules in recent seasons — with a marquee away game at SEC powerhouse Alabama on Sept. 6. Last year, the Crimson Tide advanced to the NCAA Tournament as the eighth seed, before falling to No. 1 Stanford in the second round.

During its grueling start this fall, Harvard will also take on several regional league champions, including the 2025 Patriot League regular-season titleholder Boston University on Sept. 3 and the 2024 Big East winner University of Connecticut on Sept. 20.

The Crimson will look to return to the early-season domination that has characterized the program since 2021. From 2021 to 2024, the program posted a 15-1-4 record over the first five games of its season. Those hot starts powered an impressive 44-13-11 record overall during that window.

However, through its first five matches in 2025, Harvard was uncharacteristically winless — going 0-3-2.

In the sixth game of its 2025 campaign, the Crimson trailed 1-0 in a Charles River rivalry match against Boston University and desperately needed a shift in momentum. A swift equalizer by then-junior captain Anna Rayhill followed by a second-half winner by then-freshman Caroline Studebaker provided that shift.

The taming of the Terriers seemed to ignite Harvard’s winning spark. The Crimson’s victory against its local foes launched a hot streak that extended through the opening games of its Ivy League season, and after tallying a win against its arch-rival Yale in mid-October, it was ranked first in the conference with just three games remaining in its regular season slate.

Unfortunately for Harvard, its victorious run unraveled in those last crucial games.

Although the Crimson dominated possession of the ball throughout the game, two breakaway goals helped Penn to overcome a 24-4 shot deficit to win 2-1, securing its first conference win of the season in the process. A 2-2 draw against Brown and a 2-1 loss in the final game against Columbia shut Harvard out of the Ivy League Tournament.

The Crimson concluded last season with a 5-6-3 overall record and 3-3-1 in Ivy play — its first losing record since 2006.

The disappointment of last year’s result is fueling the team’s mindset heading into this season.

“Last year, we had a really difficult start, but I was incredibly proud of the turnaround and the winning streak we went on in the middle of the year to put ourselves in first place with two weeks left,” Hamblin said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t get over the finish line.”

“Everyone who went through that experience last year is hungry. They’re hungry to do better, hungry for more,” he added. “When you add in a first-year class that comes into a hungry returning group, they automatically behave that way too.”

Hamblin said this year’s senior class has stepped up to lead the team in hopes of bookending their Crimson careers with a second Ivy League title. The team, spurred by the seniors, is striving to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament and live up to its impressive reputation.

“They’re leading the charge in regard to the standards,” Hamblin said. “Having a senior class that is ready to do the work on and off the field and be selfless for the best interest of the team is super important.”

Harvard retained most of its offensive productivity from last season, with the players accounting for 18 of its 19 goals and 32 of 35 goal contributions returning to the team.

Returning captain and forward Rayhill, as well as senior defender Jasmine Leshnick, led the team last season with four goals apiece, with four other players also finding the back of the net. Rayhill and Leshnick started all 14 matches and led all returners in minutes played last season.

Alongside Rayhill, key offensive contributors in midfielder Írena Héðinsdóttir Gonzalez and forward Ólöf Kristinsdóttir will serve as captains this year and bring immense experience across various levels. Héðinsdóttir Gonzalez captained Iceland at the youth level, and Kristinsdóttir has appeared for Iceland’s senior team. Additionally, Rayhill was named to the watchlist for the Hermann’s Trophy — which recognizes the top individual collegiate soccer players.

“When you have that type of talent, effort-producing players, it is very hard for the team to not follow in their footsteps,” Hamblin said.

Meanwhile, sophomore midfielder Elsa Santos López — who missed last year’s Penn game due to a call-up to the Spanish youth national team — and senior defensive midfielder Susie Long each led the team with four assists.

Audrey Francois ’26, who started in 13 of 14 games last season with one goal and two assists, is the lone scorer not returning. Francois signed a professional contract with the Vancouver Rise in Canada’s Northern Super League this January.

“We didn’t really have one player who took on the line of the goal scoring,” Hamblin said. “Our approach this year has been that we want to score one more than you.”

“What we’ve focused on is being a little bit more dynamic in the attack, being a little bit more dangerous,” he added. “Having so many returners that know how to put the ball in the back of the net and have been in those moments is huge, and then supplementing them with our first-year attacking group is going to hopefully align very, very well.”

While Harvard returns most of its offensive unit, it has to adjust to losses on the defensive end of the field.

The Crimson faces open questions on filling two key positions: defender August Hunter ’26 and goalkeeper Rhiannon Stewart ’26, a former Crimson Sports staff writer and now-graduate transfer at Stanford. The duo featured in every minute for Harvard throughout the past two seasons, and each finished with Second-Team All-Ivy honors.

Hamblin underscored the experience of the freshmen and sophomore goalies on his roster — which includes a rare incoming transfer in sophomore Nicole Bidun from the University of Georgia and freshman Olivia Busby, who has appeared for the Canadian youth national team at the U17 World Cup.

“We have four goalkeepers on the roster, but not one of them has played one minute for Harvard. So we’re going into this year with no experience from wearing a Harvard jersey, but we feel very, very confident in our group,” said Hamblin, a former Big East Goalkeeper of the Year for Boston College himself.

“When you lose a center back and a goalkeeper that played pretty much every minute for the last two years, that’s going to have an impact because there’s going to be some differences in the connections and so forth,” he added. “But we’ve been really happy with what we’ve seen so far.”

Hamblin identified three areas of improvement: maintaining a possession-based style of play, taking greater advantage of counterattacking opportunities, and capitalizing on set pieces.

“If we can do well in those areas, I think we’re going to take a step forward and be very, very hard to play this year,” the coach said.

This season comes on the horizon of the upcoming Women’s World Cup, set to take place in Brazil in the summer of 2027. During the 2023 World Cup, current Boston Legacy FC player Josefine Hasbo ’25 represented Denmark and became the first Harvard athlete to play on soccer’s largest stage.

Including Hasbo and Francois, at least 10 Harvard women’s soccer alums have gone on to sign professional contracts across North America and Europe.

At least eight active Crimson players have experience at the senior and youth levels with their national teams, including the United States, Iceland, and Spain.

“We view ourselves as a very diverse group of athletes. Soccer is a global game. Harvard’s a global university. There’s a lot of synergy there,” Hamblin said. “We are trying to recruit the best players we can around the U.S. and even around the world.”

Three of the seven freshmen are international, one hailing from Canada and the other pair from Spain. Across the entire team, 10 of 25 players hail from six different countries outside of the United States.

Hamblin added that the women’s soccer program has become “almost an incubating space for professional athletes.”

“There’s a lot of players in our locker room now that aspire to be professional soccer players, and that’s not something that was really on the cards 10 years ago,” Hamblin said. “We want to make sure we’re not only being competitive on the field for Harvard, but we’re also supporting those individual player goals that we’ve had some success with in the past.”

The team will kick off its season against Stony Brook (1-0-1) on Thursday at 6:00 p.m. EDT. The Seawolves won the Coastal Athletic Association Championship in 2024 but lost last year’s final to Elon University on penalties.

Harvard will strive to reignite its offensive spark from last year’s hot streak, while also solidifying a new goalkeeper to anchor its defensive unit.

“​​As a coach, I think it’s so rewarding to see the players who get recruited from around the world get to know each other, meet each other, and learn from each other,” Hamblin said. “It’s that melting pot of all these different experiences and having fun together, doing hard things.”

“We’re taking the right steps in that direction, so I’m very excited and looking forward to Thursday,” he added.

—Staff writer Uy B. Pham can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ubp.88. Follow him on X @uybpham.