LISBON FALLS – Mt. Abram had little trouble controlling the play and keeping the ball in their offensive end during Saturday’s Mountain Valley Conference season opener.

The problem was getting it past the pesky young Greyhounds’ defense.

Sam Witherspoon finally broke the ice about midway through the second half and then collected an assist when Aaron Adams added a late insurance goal to give the Roadrunners a 2-0 win.

The Roadrunners outshot the Greyhounds, 27-7, but couldn’t get a lot of quality chances from inside the box for much of the first half.

“They lock it in the box, so every time we turn and kick it, it’s just bouncing off people left and right and there was no room to really move,” said Witherspoon.

“We’re young and we played one of the better teams in our league basically 1-0,” said Lisbon coach Scott Barden, whose teams starts four sophomores and three freshmen. “If you look at both of their goals, there was a scramble in front and that’s basically how they scored.”

The Greyhound defense was stout, but they struggled in transition and never really tested Roadrunner goalie Andy Sperry.

“Playing a team like this the way we did is good, confidence-wise. We played them tough,” Barden said. “If we can stick the ball in the net, we’ll build on it.”

Lisbon looked a little tentative on offense, while Mt. Abram came out a bit too aggressive playing on a Lisbon field that is about 3/4 the size of its home field.

“We didn’t adjust well to carrying the ball to net. We were just trying to boot it in,” said Mt. Abram coach Darren Allen. “We told them at halftime to carry the ball in, draw the defender out and then dish it out.”

The Roadrunners made another halftime adjustment to try and get more people in the box and it paid off with their first goal.

“We decided to have the defense make the throw-ins to try to even-out the numbers and Sam Dyer flipped it back with his head,” Witherspoon said.

Witherspoon got behind a couple of Lisbon defenders and poked the ball to the left of Wilkins, who had set up towards the middle of the net.

The Roadrunners then turned up the pressure on Wilkins, who responded with some nice saves, including a one-handed stop diving to his right on an Adams bid late in the second half.

“With what we have, for the most part, he’s going to be facing probably 20-25 shots per game, just like he did today,” Barden said.

Wilkins couldn’t do anything about Adams’ goal, which came off a nice feed from Witherspoon with nine seconds left.

“Spoon crossed it, and the goalie kept floating the other way and I jumped out and got a foot in there and put it in near post,” Adams said.

“I’m happy with the result, getting that first win under your belt,” Allen said. “We’ve got some kids coming back in a couple of weeks. We’re kind of thin right now, only four or five subs.”