GENEVA — Geneva coach Jason Bhatta knows how important set pieces can be for a team to be successful.

And in the Vikings’ season opener, they showed that they heard his message loud and cleared.

Geneva scored four goals off of four separate set-piece situations to come away with a 4-0 victory in its season opener against Marmion on Tuesday.

“We’ve got some big bodies out there and we got some good service off of our throws, corners or whatever set pieces we had,” Bhatta said. “Credit to the boys, they played great and deserve to enjoy the night.”

The Vikings (1-0) struck the scoreboard first in the 21st minute of play off of a corner kick. After senior Chase Marquardt sent the ball to the far post to find senior Caleb Kelly, who centered the ball with his head to junior Gabe Barwiolek, who sunk the ball in the back of the net for the team’s first goal of the season.

“We’ve been working a lot in practice over the past few days just trying to perfect those,” Kelly said. “We wanted to make sure we knew the plan once it came around in a game so we could execute it perfectly, and we did exactly that.”

Three minutes later, Kelly had a chance to get a score of his own after drawing a penalty kick. And after a bit of a hesitation, the senior, who led the team with 17 goals last season, buried his first score of the year.

“It felt so nice,” Kelly said. “The keeper did get a hand on it, but luckily I put it away. It was really nice to get that and just be able to keep it going offensively.”

Senior Ben Murphy scored the third set piece of the night for the Vikings in the 32nd minute, converting on a free kick from 30 yards out. Junior Ben Raby netted the only goal in the second half, getting his foot on a rebounded shot from a throw-in for the score.

And after returning a majority of their offensive-minded starters from the team that made it all the way to the sectional finals a season ago, Bhatta said he was more than happy to come away with a big win to start the season.

“This lays a marker down for this year,” Bhatta said. “We made a run last year and returned a lot of players, so I think teams should know that we’ve got a lot of quality on the team and we’re back and ready to make another push in the postseason.”

Meanwhile, it was not the coaching debut Cadets coach Anne Iwinski was hoping for. The Cadets (0-1) finished with only two shots on goal, both coming off of free kicks.

“We came out strong and had a lot of pressure early,” Iwinski said. “They made a great save on an early free kick and I think all the momentum went away from us. We played to their strengths and we didn’t play our game.”

The Cadets also were without senior forward Jordan Peinado in the opener due to him getting a red card in the regional semifinal match a season ago. And Iwinski said that the loss of Marmion’s top returning goal scorer unfortunately showed on the pitch.

“I know it’s only one guy, but he’s truly been our captain and our leader early on,” Iwinski said. “So missing him this game, unfortunately nobody stepped up and filled that void and it all just snowballed from there.”