Telegraph photo by TOM KING Bishop Guertin's Caitlyn Toom (20) maneuvers against Nashua South's Jenna Hamelin during the Cards'3-1 win Thursday night at Stellos Stadium

NASHUA – And now, it’s tourney time.

For three of the four teams competing at Stellos Stadium in Thursday night’s soccer doubleheader, the post season beckons.

In fact, the the Bishop Guertin girls played a tourney-type 3-1 win over another playoff team, Nashua South,while the South boys cruised past Bishop Guertin, 5-0. The Cards are the only one of the four who won’t be playing next week, done at 3-10-2.

“We’re really excited,” South senior C.J. Dawe said, his Panthers finishing the regular season at 11-4-1. “We’ve been looking all year to the playoffs and just seeing if we can produce a really good run.”

That’s what both the Cardinal and Panther girls want to do, and they seemed to use last night as a start, especially BG, which finished the regular season at 14-2 and could end up as high as third in Division I. South winds up a few spots lower at 11-5, and both should host prelims next Thursday at Stellos.

“The regular season’s over, which is exciting,” Cards coach Pat Mulcahy said. “But now it’s time to turn the page, on to the next chapter.”

The final chapter of the regular season for both began with a long high Hannah Lord goal for BG 23 minutes into the contest, one that South netminder Haleigh Swabowicz (six saves) could not reach. But the next page saw the Panthers even it on a near identical booming kick by Juliana Martin past diving goalie Erin Morris (five saves) five minutes later. But Delaney Ramalho got the go-ahead in a flurry at 31:28.

The Cards got the second half clincher at 65:28, Katie Boudreau scoring off a Lord corner.

The story within the story was the defensive job, at times physical, that the Cards did on South’s top scorer, Maille McDermott.

“It was definitely a frustrating loss,” Panthers coach Lauren Keating said. “They’re familiar with how she’s played, they went into it knowing she scored 18 goals this season, and their goal was to not let her get another one.”

Mulcahy credited Grace Maloney and Caroline Cairns with the defensive job on McDermott.

“Obviously Maille is a good player, their attack goes through her,” Mulcahy said. “We had a conversation at halftime on ways to beat her, and I think our kids responded to that.”

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In the boys game, Dawe had a near clear net to fire into for the game’s first goal three minutes in.

The Panthers continued to pepper Cards senior goalie Michael Poublon, who had 12 saves. Panther Max Lopez managed to get one past him in the final minute of the first half to make it 2-0.

“Tonight was really fun,” Dawe said. “A lot of playing time for the seniors, really good showing by the team, came out fast, had a lot of fun.”

The second half was all South, as Saif Naimat, playing forward for the first time, scored twice in the first seven minutes and Emmanuel Orozco Alvarez finished the scoring soon after.

Ironically, Poublon, taken out to applause late in the game, re-entered as a forward. He almost scored on Panther goalie Elliot Mason, who had three saves – including one on a Calvin Jozokos direct kick early on.

“We’ve been in a little bit of a slump,” Panthers coach Tom Bellen said. “We’d been talking about some different things, trying to get the ball forward, get in behind some defenders, and they did a better job of it tonight.”

For BG, it’s about next year.

“The goal now is to build the program, very, very strong,” Cards coach Valdemir “Rocky” Roque said. “Unfortunately, I’m losing some good players, but you have to think about the future. (Thursday) was a fun game.”