The Bishop Guertin girls lacrosse team celebrates its tough 11-9 Division I semifinal win over Bedford at Bulldog Stadium on Saturday night. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

BEDFORD – When the halftime buzzer sounded, and the Bishop Guertin High School girls lacrosse team was staring at a stunning Division I semifinal deficit at the hands of Bedford, a member of the Cardinals coaching staff shouted out, “Nothing worth winning is easy.”

About an hour later, as the fog settled in at Bulldog Stadium, the Cardinals breathed a huge sigh of relief and celebrated a 11-9 triumph that lands them back in Tuesday’s title game vs. Pinkerton Academy at Exeter’s Bill Ball Stadium.

And those words rang true – it wasn’t easy. The Cards jumped out to a 5-1 lead and it looked like they would cruise in a game delayed more than an hour by thunderstorms. But the Bulldogs stormed back with six unanswered goals to take a 7-5 lead into the break.

But lo and behold, with just over two minutes left after a shot caromed back to the Cardinals, they went into a stall with an 11-8 lead and could taste a win.

“Not everybody has to be top shelf all the time,” Guertin coach Leslie Why said. “But when you have this much depth, it shines through. We were lucky we were able to put it all together tonight for 50 minutes.

“It comes down to possession, it always does. It’s either draws, ground balls, or some combination of the two. And I think that’s what it came down to.”

So Guertin standout Riley Bouvier (game high four goals) told Why at halftime that perhaps Kate Campel should replace her on draw controls, and that move worked as Guertin owned the ball in the second half.

Bouvier and Bedford’s Sydney Grogan traded goals at the start of the half, and then Guertin, down 8-6,went on a 5-0 run, holding the Bulldogs scoreless for an incredible 20:32 before Bedford’s Reagan O’Brien scored her team-leading third goal with just 13.7 seconds left in the game.

“We just got a little flat and should have expected that they were going to come out really strong,” Bedford coach Christine Hodgdon said. “We let them get a quick one, but we were right in it until the end …

“I’m really, really proud of my group. They never doubted they could pull it off. We just ran out of time.”

Ironically, the last time Campel had been a regular in the draw rotation was when the Cards beat Bedford 15-8 earlier in the season, seemingly centuries ago. But it all came back to her.

“I’ve been trying to get into my draw groove for a little while,” she said. “So this is the game, there’s no better shot. You never know if you’re going to move on or not, just pedal to the metal, just focus on technique, power, and get it up in the air. .. You determine where the ball is going to go. That’s the game, who wants it more.”

Campel said the team wasn’t scared at the half.

“I don’t think it was scary,” she said. “This team has so much depth, so much fire, that we didn’t really get bothered by the score, we say the score is 0-0 no matter what.”

Steph Reap scored with 19:58 left to make it 8-7, sparking the comeback, and next came two goals by Maddy Keating, tying it with 15:08 to go and putting BG up for good with 13:56 left, 9-8. Lindsay Hult, who got her second yellow card with 6:41 left and had to leave the game for good, scored her third of the game falling down with 12:22 left to make it 10-8. The streak was topped off by Bouvier with 10:16 left. Nat Coutu had a goal plus an assist, and Reap, whom Why heaped praise on after the game, had an assist to go with her goal, showing the depth the Cards have.

Meanwhile, Makenna Reekie was solid with six stops as it appeared she took a more aggressive tactic in the second half.

But the most impressive stretch of what Hodgdon correctly called “a high quality game” came when Guertin went into its stall and took nearly three minutes off the clock. It was a stall Why said her players didn’t want to try when a Bedford rally fell short 9-6 in their second regular season meeting, but they did it this time.

“It’s tough, they’re a good team, a seasoned team, they’re veterans,” Hodgdon said. “They know how to do that. But we definitely had our chances.”

But they didn’t have the ball.

“We had to tough through it,” Why said. “Their spirits were never down or broken. They know even more so how they can dig deep and get it done.”

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