Is it really better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all? Because this sick feeling I’ve had in the pit of my stomach since seeing the women’s soccer team lose to the University of Maine Sunday is just too much to handle, and it isn’t showing any signs of going away soon.

I’ve tried chocolates, ice cream, heavy drinking and long baths with scented candles, but since none of that has worked, I’m trying to use this column as self-therapy. My Psych 101 professor says sometimes it’s good to just talk about your feelings, so here we go.

Since its dramatic season-opening overtime win against Boston College, I have thought a lot about the women’s soccer team. And I mean a lot. When I would see one of the players on campus, I got that familiar sweaty-palms, light-and-thready pulse thing that I always used to get when J.J. Redick would hit a fade-away three from somewhere in Siberia, just for me.

I loved this team because they lost so much talent on both ends of the field to graduation last year, but had an even better regular season this year than last. Starting four freshmen and two sophomores who had barely received any playing time their first year, this team was supposed to be in a rebuilding phase.

But up until last weekend, I was convinced that BU women’s soccer doesn’t rebuild, they reload. With a 6-0-1 conference record and huge non-conference wins against BC and Santa Clara, I thought this team had proven everyone wrong. Simply put, I was in love. When they lost to Hartford in the season-ending game, handing the America East regular season championship to their opponents, I was blinded by this love and figured it was just a fluke.

I thought they’d still win the America East tournament championship-which is more important anyway, since it determines the conference’s representative to the national tournament.

I thought wrong. The wheels came off and they dropped a 0-0 decision to Maine in the semifinals. In case you are unfamiliar with tournament rules, if the game is still tied after two overtime periods, the match advances to a shootout. Apparently this team needs to read Penalty Shots for Dummies over the offseason, because they couldn’t even get all of their shots on goal. News flash, ladies: You can’t score if you don’t put the ball on net.

In the end, I guess this team was just too young and inexperienced to keep the success going all season long. Maybe the freshmen hit a wall just before the last two games, or maybe the pressure of playing for the regular season crown and playing in a Division 1 conference championship tournament finally proved to be too much.

However, it would be inappropriate to put too much blame on the inexperienced freshmen and sophomores-after all, it’s the senior leaders’ job to carry the team in difficult, pressure-filled, big-time moments like these. Goalie Stephanie Dreyer managed to allow only one goal over the last 200 minutes of the season, but wasn’t quite stellar in the shootout, giving up two goals.

And where was soccer God Lauren Erwin during this stretch of time? No one knows, but she certainly wasn’t appearing on the score sheet. Back Erica Lee was solid on the defensive end over the last two games, but she really showed her offensive ineptness when she determined during the shootout that the best place to put a penalty kick was high over the net.

It’s times like these when heroes are born, when normal soccer players reach superstardom by being perfect. Terrier Nation (however small it may be) needed them to be perfect. Unfortunately, they were far from it.

Coach Nancy Feldman probably deserves a lot of blame, too. I don’t know much about coaching soccer, but I do know she’s the coach and it’s her job to make sure her team wins the games they play. Up until the end of the season, she had done a pretty good job doing this.

In fact, if anyone would give me a voice in this matter, I would’ve voted her as America East Coach of the Year. She recruited a very talented group of freshmen and taught all the new, inexperienced players to step in and contribute as the team seemingly didn’t lose a beat between seasons.

But after last week, my opinion has changed. Now, I think she should be fired.

Unfortunately, my love affair with the Terriers this season has been tarnished beyond repair, just like their postseason hopes. Although I think their total body of work on the season is more than enough to get them into the NCAA Tournament with an at-large bid, the NCAA selection committee has yet to recognize that a conference like the America East has more than one talented team in women’s soccer (as well as in several other sports).

Don’t get me wrong-I think this team could get its act together and go on a run deep into the tournament, but unless someone from the selection committee is a reader of mine, they won’t have a chance to show off their stuff on the national stage. But then again, if they can’t beat Hartford or Maine anymore, they probably don’t deserve a spot in the tournament field.

Whew. I feel a lot better after getting all that off my chest. In retrospect, I really don’t think Feldman should be fired-having this team in the position to have a small glimmer of hope for an at-large bid speaks volumes about her ability as coach.

The same can be said for Erwin, Dreyer and Lee-they led a ridiculously young, inexperienced team to one or two steps from greatness, and Erwin and Dreyer managed to go down in history as two of the best Terrier soccer players ever.

Whether or not you think this season was a disappointment because they were unable to replicate past seasons’ successes, one thing is certain: The Terriers don’t rebuild. They reload. And they’ll be right back as the preseason No. 1 team in the America East next season, with an even better chance of making a successful national tournament run. Although they will lose their leading scorer, best defender and starting goalie, the talented underclassmen will step up and improve, led by forward Farrell McClernon and goalie Christina Reuter (who only holds the BU record for the lowest goals-against average in a season).

Regardless of what happens next year, the end of this season is a sad occurrence. This team has been the best, most decorated team over my four years here at BU. Maybe my incurable dejection lies in the fact that I will never again see this team dominate and out-class an inferior No. 3 team in the nation.

Of course they might yet play again this season, and I could be wrong about the NCAA selection committee. In fact, I challenge them to prove me wrong. Show that you have just a sliver of intelligence and put the Terriers in the national championship tournament-they earned it before last week, and plenty of other teams have been awarded at-large bids as they backed their way into NCAA Tournaments.

Give them a chance to make me fall in love with them one more time.