Exeter's Kyle Gutstein battles Bishop Guetin's Stella Paisner during Friday's season opener for both at Stellos Stadium. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – They didn’t fiddle and diddle in the middle.

They owned it.

Draw a straight line from goal to goal on the Motta Field turf at Stellos Stadium, and you saw the Exeter High School girls soccer team’s strength on Friday vs. Bishop Guertin in the season opener for both a 3-0 Blue Hawks victory.

“Honestly, we’ve got to clean up a little bit in the midfield, and our center backs stepping up more strong to the ball,” Cards coach Chris Millett said. “They have some girls who can strike the ball from a distance. … We made too many mistakes in the middle of the field.”

Exeter may have had something to do with that.

“You always put your best in the middle of the field,” Blue Hawks coach Megan Young said. “Our strength is certainly the middle. The second half we started to play a little bit more confident and it showed.”

The Cards’ plus was their speed down the wings, but they couldn’t then get enough chances on the centering passes. The teams were scoreless after the first half, but that didn’t last long after Young had some words for her team during the break.

“We were a little bit timid,” Young said. “I was a little disappointed. We were playing a little bit more defensively than I like to see but in the second half we decided to take some risks and it paid off. We talked at halftime that we hadn’t really gotten any quality shots off.”

Guertin keeper Ella Calder, a sophomore, was playing her first varsity game and made the save of the game nearly two minutes into the second half, leaping high for a catch, arms extended.

But unfortunately about 30 seconds later Exeter’s Isabelle Ernst fired a rocket to the far left and it found the twine for the only goal the Blue Hawks would need.

It stayed that way before Exeter would get two more in a 3:26 span, beginning with Olivia Plunte’s goal at 68:50, and then a bang-bang header inside of eight minutes to play.

“Kudos to Ella Calder (six saves), she never played soccer before and she played strong,” Millett said. “Again, I think all of their goals were a breakdown in our defense. We’ll watch the film, we’ll get better, try to tighten it up.”

Brynn Anderson had five stops in goal for Exeter. Millett thought that mainstays Emerson Brown and Zoe Horton-Sousa got the ball moving and “controlled to the ball as best they can, but they were clearly man-marking them and double marking them at times.”

Again, the outside was BG’s territory, and Millett also felt outside Camryn Leighton did a good job.

The Cards have a tough team next in Nashua South, which opens noon today vs. Portsmouth at Stellos, and in addition to the Division I iron, they also face Massachusetts foe Bishop Feehan and Rhode Island’s La Salle Academy.

“Trial by fire,” Millett said.