LEWISTON — Beth Lebel was busy Saturday morning.

Playing the front end of a varsity doubleheader with the boys in its season opener, the Lewiston Blue Devils’ girls soccer team showed a bit of rust early, and Lebel, the team’s senior keeper, caught the brunt of the action.

Through the opening 30 minutes of the first half, Morse contained the ball well in the Lewiston end, and Lebel made four diving stops in that span to keep the game scoreless.

Despite her efforts, and thanks to a pair of heads-up plays by forward Anna Lozano, Morse netted a pair of goals in the waning minutes of the first half and held on in the second to earn a 2-0 road victory over Lewiston in the teams’ season opener at Don Roux Field.

“She kept them in the game,” Morse coach Steve Boyce said. “A couple of those early goals go in, emotions take the negative side and it’s different.”

“It’s all a credit to our goaltending coach, Butch Dow and the work he does with her,” Lewiston coach Steve Corson said. “She was a backup last year to (Katie) Cobb, and she had some big cleats to fill, and she’s showing what good coaching a lot of hard work will do.”

Lozano had seen just about enough goaltending heroics for one day, though. In the 31st minute of the opening half, Lozano capped a strange play off a corner kick. Emily Howell launched the kick from the left side. The ball hit the crossbar, popped straight up into the air and landed at the far post. Morse’s Tori Field tipped the ball back into the center, where Lozano cashed in the first goal of the game.

“It was just a toe poke from Tori Field,” Lozano said. “There were three defenders and the goalie all around me. I found it with my tow and got it through.”

Lozano’s second was a much more traditional take on a corner kick. The ball sailed into the box, again off Howell’s foot, and found Lozano, who redirected the ball with her head past Lebel just 46 seconds later.

“We’re not known for height, but (Lozano) can get up in the air well, and she showed that today.”

In the second half, the Blue Devils tightened up defensively, and started to run a bit more up front. It made all the difference.

“That’s the way we can play,” Corson said. “If we come out and play every game the way we played the second half, we can compete with anybody. But if we get into the kick-and-run part of the game, we can’t play that way at all.”

For their part, the Shipbuilders appeared to ease off the gas just enough to give the Devils a bit of momentum early in that second frame.

“We tell them not to let up, but it’s natural at this level,” Boyce said. “When we get tired in the second half, though, we have a lot of seniors who can dig down in that situation, they know what to do.”

The Blue Devils kept even with Morse in the shot column in the second half, forced keeper Kate Thibodeau to make more saves than Lebel and out-cornered the Shipbuilders 4-2, but couldn’t find the back of the net.