Bishop Guertin's Rylee Bouvier tries to work against the double team of Nashua South's Bailey Carroll, left, and Ella Benzekri during Tuesday's 22-3 Cardinals win at Stellos Stadium. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – They are matchups when basically the outcome is already decided.

But for the Bishop Guertin and Nashua High School boys and girls lacrosse teams, the benefits are different.

The Panthers take these games to try to improve, figuring the elevation in competition is better, while both Cardinal teams try to work on things.

Tuesday was no different at Stellos Stadium. In the sun-splashed Motta Field turf in the afternoon, the Cardinal girls prevailed 22-3 in a game that was actually a battle of unbeatens.

Meanwhile, the Guertin boys prevailed 16-3 in the Stellos nightcap.

“I just took my team to go play in a club lacrosse tournament that you play in in the summertime,” South girls coach Ciki McIntire said. “They’ve (Guertin) assembled quite the team. We work with what we have, and I’m really proud of the work and the effort my team has given.”

And why not? The Panthers(4-1) had actually come into this one having beaten up on the true have-nots by a combined 69-8. And they even took a 1-0 lead in this one, but had to watch the Cards score at a clip of a goal a minute, 10 straight over 10 minutes. It was 15-2 at halftime.

The 4-0 Cards had 13 players score, 16 of the 22 with assists. The Guertin rundown: Madison Keating (with two assists) and Natalie Coutu each with four goals; Rylee Bouvier with three goals and three assists; Lindsay Hult (two goals, two assists), Theresa Prunier (goal, two assists), Kate Campel (goal, assist), Amelie Piercy (goal, assist), Frida Turriza (goal), Anna Campel (goal), Lauren Redfern (goal), Delaney Ramahlo (goal), Tannah O’Neill-Blake (goal, assist), and Ariana Kouchalakos (goal, assist), and Stephanie Reap (three assists).

The Panthers got two goals by Olivia Johnson and one by Ella Benzekri.

“We were working on spacing,” Cards coach Leslie Why said. “Today instead of being an ‘eight meter team’ we became a ’12 meter team’, because we had really been jamming things in (on offense.)

“If you don’t have the space, you can’t do all that you could possibly do with all of your possible weapons. … We got everybody in for significant time. Mission accomplished.”

So both coaches left getting out of it what they wanted, and they’ll do it again Thursday night.

“I’m extremely happy, especially after not having last year,” McIntire said. “I said, ‘We’re going to use today to get better.’ And we did. Our defense got a lot of work today, and they’re going to get better.”

CARDINALS START FAST

In the boys game, Guertin (5-0)started fast, taking a 7-0 lead after one quarter, and led 11-1 at the half. Running time set in once Aiden Laurendeau put in a rocket with 6:11 left in the third to make it 13-1.

Do the Panthers get better in a game like this?

“I think we do,” South coach Bill Monsen, his team now 2-3, said. “You see every facet of the top level of competition. Every little facet of the game (the Cards) can exploit, from the faceoff and wing play, to substituting and subbing from the mid line. We hadn’t seen a team execute subbing from the mid line like Bishop Guertin did, until tonight. And it was good, good practice for us.”

But Monsen certainly felt his team just could never get untracked on offense, losing too many faceoffs to BG’s J.J. Murphy. “We have a talented offense, but they need the ball,” Monsen said. “But our defense is young and they learned a lot tonight.”

Rhett Medling, Connor Rowsel and Jaden Murphy scored for the Panthers. Guertin? They had multiple goal scorers, led by the likes of John Krikorian, Mike Kiely, Nick McGovern, Connor Bouvier, Emerson Warren, Connor Guibord,Kevin Broderick.

The two teams meet again Thursday afternoon at Stellos.

“They put out five really good offensive guys at a time,” Guertin’s Chris Cameron said of the Panthers. “They just don’t have the depth that we have and defensively we’re just so good…What do we get out of it? I didn’t get them too hyped up for this game. I wanted to see how they could get themselves ready on their own.

“We weren’t super sharp, but we’re going to be dialed in, focused for Thursday. … Offensively we’re still not super sharp yet.”