By Randy Whitehouse,Staff Writer

LISBON FALLS – The Lisbon Greyhounds were nervous, hot, tired and thirsty, all of the things you expect a team to be for its season opener.

They were also very hungry and very impressive.

Levi Ervin racked up 176 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns and Dan Willis added two scoring runs of his own as Lisbon dominated a young Livermore Falls defense from its opening drive in a 34-0 win at Thompson Field on Saturday. The Greyhounds collected 405 yards in total offense, 283 of them on the ground, led by Ervin (18 carries, 105 yards and five catches for 47 yards) and Willis (four carries, 122 yards).

“We have three offensive linemen that didn’t play football last year. We’ve got a quarterback that never played quarterback,” said Lisbon coach Dick Mynahan. “I was looking for first-game jitters. I was looking for mistakes and hoping I wouldn’t find them. I thought they played with a lot of composure and did a really nice job for us, probably played a little better than I would have expected.”

That includes senior quarterback Chris Brunick, a converted wing back who had perfect debut throwing the ball (9-for-9, 122 yards, one TD).

“Chris has known he’s going to work at quarterback all summer, and since the preseason exhibition games he’s been working as hard as he can, and he works hard every time he’s on the practice field,” Mynahan said. “What he’s doing is putting himself in position to be a pretty good quarterback. Most important is the way he’s leading our team and running the huddles.”

The Greyhounds broke their first offensive huddle ready to attack the Andies, as Ervin ran off left tackle for a 26-yard gain and put them in Andies’ territory on their first play. Ervin scored from the three eight plays later, and Lisbon was in the lead for good.

“The offensive line just about pushed them around and gave us really big holes,” Ervin said. “They did a nice job pushing and it was a good blocking all around, by the wings, the wide receivers, everybody.”

A 17-yard TD run by Willis and Ervin’s two-point catch from Brunick on Lisbon’s next possession made it 14-0. Brunick hooked up with Andrew Dubois on a nice 45-yard catch and run with 45 seconds left in the half and widened the halftime margin to 22-0.

“We didn’t tackle very well today. I think that’s the big thing,” said Livermore Falls coach Brad Bishop. “We had people there. We just didn’t tackle.”

Willis exploited some of that poor tackling to cap the scoring with an 87-yard TD run along the left sideline.

The Andies’ best chance to get on the board came just before Willis’ run.

They churned out a 16-play drive and thought they had six points when Ryan Webster went around the left side, dove and hit the end zone pylon. Officials marked him out of bounds at the 2, however, and the Greyhound defense held on fourth-and-goal.

Webster finished with 99 yards on 23 carries.

“I saw some good things in the second half to build on, so I’m not discouraged. I hope these guys aren’t,” said Bishop. “We’re trying to go to our strengths. We’re just young. That’s no excuse, but we’ve got a lot of new faces at new positions and we’ll work at getting better.”