LACONIA – The Kearsarge girls’ lacrosse team won a quarterfinal game in double overtime last week that won’t soon be forgotten, but the Cougars didn’t want it to be their last memory of this tournament.

Coming off a dramatic victory over Laconia in the opening round of the Division III playoffs, No. 6 Kearsarge doubled down with a dominant 8-4 win over No. 2 Bow in the semifinals on Saturday.

The Cougars (12-4), now winners of six in a row, have made fools of any who doubted their chances at returning to the championship game, where they lost by one goal to Laconia last spring. Kearsarge graduated five seniors after that game and only three of six juniors returned for their senior season.

“We lost a lot of players, but that didn’t stop us,” Kearsarge junior Jackie DeAngelis said. “We’re a team that believes in ourselves and we’re a team who works as hard as we possibly can for our coaches, for ourselves, for our fans and everyone.”

The Falcons (13-3), who cruised into the playoffs with 11 wins over their previous 12 games, were stunned by the Cougars early and found themselves trailing 5-0 with seven minutes left in the first half.

“Bad day for a bad day,” said Bow Coach Chris Raabe, wrapping up her 18th season with the program. “One game doesn’t make a season. We just did not play our game today.”

Kearsarge gained a 4-0 lead in the first nine minutes of play. Raabe gathered her players for a timeout, but that only stifled the Cougars’ attack for another nine minutes before Emilie Webster gave Kearsarge its fifth goal.

The last time these teams met, Bow dealt Kearsarge a 12-9 loss in the season opener on April 10.

“I don’t think Bow really knew who we were yet,” DeAngelis said. “When we saw them in the first game of the season, we were not who Kearsarge is, we did not play lacrosse like Kearsarge does.”

Webster and DeAngelis led the Cougars on offense with two goals and one assist each. Leslie Angus contributed a pair of goals and Ally Wilson chipped in a goal as well. Anya Nowicki made 11 saves in net.

Scoring often and early was exactly what the Cougars hoped to accomplish.

“We knew we could not start out slow,” DeAngelis said. “We started a little slow in a lot of games this year and we knew we had to come out right away, work as a team, stick together, and I think that’s what helped us get that 5-0 lead.”

The Falcons finally responded with two goals by Taylor Darrell in the final six minutes of the half, cutting the deficit to 5-2 by halftime. Bow seemed poised to get back in the game when Emma Gagne scored 2:03 into the second half, but the Cougars got one back quickly from Webster just 16 seconds later.

Bow continued to fight until the final seconds, but Kearsarge didn’t let up either. Angus and DeAngelis each added a goal in the second half, pulling the Cougars out to an 8-3 lead.

Darrell, who will play at Division I University of Delaware next year, scored a third and final goal with 31 seconds remaining. As the Cougars’ defense focused on her for all 50 minutes, Bow couldn’t find another player to step up as a scoring threat.

Darrell led Bow with 12 points (nine goals, three assists) in the Falcons’ 18-8 shelling of ConVal on Thursday in the quarterfinals.

“We were doubling (Darrell) and just trying to shut her down so she couldn’t put any balls in the back of the net,” Kearsarge Coach Hilary Grimes said.

Kearsarge will face top-seeded Derryfield in the title game at SNHU on Tuesday at 5 p.m. Derryfield knocked out No. 5 Pelham, 9-8, at Laconia High on Saturday.