Rain intensified throughout Saturday afternoon’s NHIAA Division II girls lacrosse semifinal at Nashua’s Stellos Stadium between Hanover High and Winnacunnet. As the water drops descended with increasing force, so sank the Bears’ fortunes during a 13-7 loss.

After scoring twice to pull within 5-4 with two minutes remaining in the first half, fifth-seeded Hanover surrendered three goals in one minute, 31 seconds and trailed, 8-4, at intermission. The Warriors (17-1) scored three of the third quarter’s four goals to pull away.

Top-seeded Winnacunnet, which won its 15th consecutive game, suffered its lone loss to Portsmouth. The Warriors defeated visiting Hanover, 16-9, during the teams’ regular-season finale.

Winnacunnet will play the division final Tuesday against the winner of Sunday afternoon’s semifinal between No. 2 Merrimack (14-1) and No. 3 Merrimack Valley (11-4). The Warriors are making their fourth championship-game appearance since 2017 but seeking their first state crown since 2006.

“In all honesty, they were probably better than us this year,” said fifth-year Hanover coach Sarah Martin, whose program has reached at least the semifinals in each of her five seasons at the helm. “One of these years, we’ll get over the hump.”

Leading the way for the fifth-seeded Bears (11-7) was hard-charging midfielder Cassidy “Bumpsie” Loughman, who not only scored three goals and added an assist, but absorbed stick blows to the head that four times left the sophomore crumpled on the stadium’s new, $1.5 million artificial turf.

“The referees kept telling me she was running into the defender’s sticks,” Martin said of a player who finished the season with 75 goals. Loughman “was trying to put the team on her back and I was pleading for consistency, because their players weren’t getting called for charging at the other end.”

Another Hanover standout was goalkeeper Charlotte Robinson, who showed why she was a first team All-State selection by making 11 saves while watching numerous other shots whiz past her cage.

“I’m so proud of Charlotte, especially after she rolled her ankle and was limping around out there,” Martin said. “She bailed us out of a lot of tough situations this year.”

Nora Bradley, another of the Bears’ four seniors, produced a hat trick and an assist and plans to play at Skidmore (N.Y.) College next spring. She finished the season with 41 goals.

Hanover was knocked out of the playoffs by Winnacunnet for a second consecutive season. The top-seeded Warriors won the teams’s 2024 semifinal clash, 10-8, before losing to Windham in the title game. The Bears fell in the 2023 finals, 12-11, to Hollis-Brookline.

Saturday, Hanover committed too many turnovers and didn’t shoot enough on offense. The Bears won only 7 of 23 draw controls.

Defensively, the Upper Valley’s representatives couldn’t consistently stay with Warriors who dodged, pivoted and rolled out of reach, racing into open space in front of Robinson and several times receiving passes there without an opponent anywhere nearby.

“We really struggled on the draw and (Winnacunnet) got so many more offensive possessions that it wore my young defensemen down,” said Martin, whose team featured no juniors. “We had a couple of yellow cards called on us and (Winnacunnet) scored almost immediately afterwards.

“When we really needed to take care of the ball or dig in and play some defense or deal with the rain, we weren’t quite tough enough.”

Hanover, which trailed, 11-5, after the third quarter, also received a goal from Joia Collins and an assist from Iris Chestnut. McKinley Fowler had four goals for Winnacunnet and ended the season with 59.

The Warriors’ Skyla Mace and Elle Emery each put up hat tricks. The latter finished with 53 goals for the campaign and 100 combined during the past two seasons.

Notes: The Bears are 3-7 in NHIAA title games since 2002… Hanover defender Eleanor Edson, a senior starter in only her second lacrosse season, plans to attend the University of Richmond (Va.). Robinson is headed to the University of Colorado… Hanover’s last title occurred in 2016. … Winnacunnet has an enrollment of roughly 1,000 students while Hanover has about 680. The former school, located in Hampton, includes among its notable alumni, Maura Healey, the governor of Massachusetts, who also co-captained Harvard’s women’s basketball team.