BIDDEFORD — After a pair of shutout losses in its previous two games, the Biddeford field hockey team was looking to gain back some momentum in its regular-season finale Tuesday.

Windham, however, had other ideas.

The Eagles got three goals from sophomore Hannah Skvorak, including one less than two minutes into the game, and put up a defensive brick wall that frustrated the Tigers throughout on the way to a 4-0 victory on senior day at Doran Field.

The win clinched the 12th and final playoff berth in Western Class A for Windham (5-9), while Biddeford will likely have to settle for the No. 9 spot and an away game in the preliminary round Saturday.

“Windham deserved to win today, for sure, but we definitely had some opportunities,” Biddeford coach Leslie Mourmouras said. “Usually early scores don’t bother us too much. It’s the second one that deflates us, when we haven’t been able to answer.”

Down 1-0 at halftime, the Tigers nearly did answer four minutes into the second half, when a bouncing shot beat Windham goalie Tyra Boucher and looked headed for goal.

But midfielder Lauren Reynolds got behind the ball and knocked it off the goal line to preserve her team’s narrow lead.

“That was a super nice save,” Windham coach Christena Dillon said. “Lauren hasn’t had a lot of playing time, but one of my other midfielders was feeling sick, so we gave her a shot. She went for it.”

Seven minutes later, it was all but curtains for the Tigers when Skvorak scored her second off a rebound from a shot by Sydney Richard, who had broken away from the Biddeford defense before being stopped by goalie Mackenzie Hevey.

Skvorak went on to add her third with 6:15 left to play, when most players stopped expecting a corner after the ball hit the foot of a Tigers defender inside the circle. But the official waved play on, and Skvorak flipped her shot past Hevey to put her team up by three, with Matti Marcelo making it 4-0 with two minutes to play.

“Hannah was awesome. She has that fire, and that ”˜hustle, hustle, hustle, I want the ball’ mentality,” Dillon said. “She stopped and flicked the ball in on that last goal; that’s something she was working on all summer. Last year, she never would have been able to do that.”

While Windham came into the game ranked three places lower than Biddeford on the Western Class A Heal Points ladder, Eagles coach Christena Dillon said that mainly came down to games against Deering and Gorham, teams that Biddeford topped that Dillon felt her team also should have beaten.

“During the season, there have been a lot of games that we should have won,” Dillon said. “Sometimes you can’t just look at the scores or the record, and that’s what I tried to tell my girls. I think we’re pretty good, we just haven’t had the best of luck.”

Dillon said Tuesday’s result also showed how close in quality the teams ranked in the lower playoff positions are, setting up what should be an interesting first round of the playoffs.

“I think that all of those teams, six through 12, are pretty close,” she said.

On the other side, it was the fourth loss in the last five games for Biddeford (7-7), which hasn’t scored in its last six halves after being shut out just once in its opening 11 games.

With the postseason mere days away, the Tigers will have to quickly regain their footing, and, most importantly, find their goal-scoring form once again, Mourmouras said.

“I think the other teams are improving, and we’re not,” Mourmouras said. “We went through some amazing improvements from where we started at the beginning of the year, and we had a really good run, but I think we’ve hit a plateau.

“We just need to figure that out. It’s like losing that last 10 pounds; we have to do something different, and we’ve realized that. We just have to figure out how to squeeze a little more out of them.”

— Staff Writer Cameron Dunbar can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 323.