Stephen Evans and Ryno Martin-Nez did plenty of damage with their arms – and just enough with their bats – to carry St. Aloysius to a season-opening victory Friday night.

Evans drove in two runs and threw three innings of shutout ball, and Martin-Nez had an RBI single and threw two innings of perfect relief as the Flashes beat Riverside 3-0 on a frigid night at Bazinsky Field.

Leadoff hitter Jordan Muirhead also had two hits and scored two runs for St. Al, and starting pitcher Joseph Brown didn’t allow a hit in two innings. It was a strong, workmanlike win for the Flashes, who managed only four hits total but manufactured runs and supported them with strong pitching and defense.

&#8220You just want to get that first game and get it out of the way, and to do it with a win is great,” St. Al coach Clint Wilkerson said. &#8220I was very pleased with our effort. We’ve got a few crooks and crannies with this effort, but we played well.”

St. Al had a couple of chances to blow the game open, but a couple of unfortunate breaks kept it from happening.

After Evans’ RBI groundout scored Muirhead and put St. Al ahead 1-0 in the first inning, the Flashes got their first two batters on in the third. A pair of fielder’s choices short-circuited the rally, including one when Riverside left fielder Justin Martin let a lazy fly ball drop in front of him, then threw Brown out at third. Brown, thinking the ball would be caught, had held up at second.

The Flashes were victimized again by a similar play in the fifth inning. Riverside third baseman Nathan Amos dropped an easy pop up with a runner on first and no outs, but since Jeremy Falls had to wait on the bag it was an easy force out at second.

&#8220They maybe should’ve scored a couple more runs, but defense and pitching bailed us out,” Riverside coach Boo Ellis said.

Both times, the Flashes did manage to scratch one run across. Evans’ RBI single in the third and Martin-Nez’s RBI single in the fifth stretched St. Al’s lead to 3-0. The pitchers did the rest.

Evans pitched out of trouble in the fourth and fifth innings after Riverside got runners to second and third each time, and Martin-Nez slammed the door with two perfect innings of relief. Martin-Nez struck out four of the six batters he faced and didn’t allow a ball out of the infield.

It was an impressive performance on a night where the gametime temperature started at 40 degrees and dipped sharply from there.

&#8220It was all right. We’re used to it. This whole week we practiced in it,” Evans said. &#8220We threw a lot of bullpens this week and did pretty good in them, so we were ready.”