Nashua North's Arturo Romero grimaces as South's Robert Signor is over the top during Monday night's Battle of the Bridge at North. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – There were multiple quarters, periods, freshmen, JV and varsity contests the last couple of weeks in the Battle of the Bridge.

Who knew that the entire winter series between Nashua High School North and South would come down to one individual match, the last one in Monday night’s North-South wrestling encounter?

Perhaps he didn’t quite know it, but Panther freshman Ian McCubrey delivered, pinning the Titans’ Connor Smith at heavyweight in the first period, giving South a come-from-behind 38-36 win at the North medium gym. That gave the Panthers a clinching Bridge victory, 8-6.

“It feels great,” McCubrey said. “It’s my freshman year, so still working through stuff, but it feels really good.”

It was a dominant win. “That was the game plan,” the freshman said. “Just dominate and keep going.”

“We’re still trying to find out what type of wrestler he’s going to be,” South coach Adam Langlois said. “But tonight that told him what kind of wrestler he’s going to be – the aggressive one. On the attack all the time.”

While the Panthers get the dual meet victory, the real winner on Monday night may have been the sport of wrestling for the two schools overall.

“We’re making this community realize that both North and South (wrestling programs) are here to stay and compete with the best in the state,” North coach Sebastian Arroyo said. “I was very happy with the individual wrestling for both schools.”

North got a forfeit at 106 to start, as South bumped up Robert Signor to 113 and he pinned North’s Arturo Romero to even the match. After no 120 match (double forfeit) North got another forfeit at 126, but then the Panthers took three of the next four matches. Marlon Gomez got a second round pin over Hayden Durocher at 32 to make it 12-12. North’s Trevor Rivard got a pin over John McDevitt at 138 to give the Titans an 18-12 lead, but then three straight South pins – Benjamin Byrne over Yuri Soares (144), Robert Perez over Carter Tillman (150) and Diego Dominguez over Luke Ducharme (157) – gave the Panthers a 30-18 lead.

But then the match turned teal, as North’s Steven Rosario upset Connor Whitman at 165 with a second round pin. That kept the Titans alive at 30-24, and then Ruben DeJesus got a third period pin over Tyler Keegan at 175, and a point got subtracted from South for a violation, giving the Titans a 30-29 lead.

The key was Rosario’s triumph, viewed as an upset given Whitman’s reputation as one of the state’s best.

“The man of the match even though we lost was Steve Rosario,” Arroyo said. “If I had one word to describe him it would be explosive. … I told him, who’s going to be the king of Nashua here, because Connor is the No. 1 in the state. Do you want to go out there, and leave it all on the line or do you want to succumb to his name? He went out there, had a game plan, and he executed it, and shocked the whole gym.”

A forfeit at 190 gave the Titans a 36-29 edge, and it seemed they had the advantage, needing just a win in their final two matches to get their biggest win of the season.

But not so fast. South’s Landon Levesque outlasted North’s Jonathan Medrano at 215 12-7 for three crucial points.

“We needed those three,” Langlois said. “It was exciting. We work a lot on composure, keeping your composure, and that’s exactly what he did.”

With the Panthers trailing 36-32, enter McCubrey and you know the rest.

“We lost the tossup matches that I was banking on, but we gave up six (points),” Arroyo said. “That shows the inexperience of this team right now, but we competed with South.”

“We’re down numbers wise this year,” Langlois said. “This is the lightest number of kids I’ve ever had, but these kids are the toughest I’ve ever had. I would take these kids over any of the other teams I’ve had before. … I’m proud of them.”