East Lyme — Abbie Belleville was an Eastern Connecticut Conference Division I all-star at midfield last season for the league champion East Lyme girls’ soccer team. She won an ECC title in lacrosse as a midfielder, also.

On Thursday, she opened the season for the Vikings at forward, a move necessitated by the graduation of All-New England forward Meredith Healy, who scored 24 goals last season and 59 in her career.

One of East Lyme’s three captains along with Ava Pitruzzello and Sarina McCollum, Belleville made the switch to the forward line look effortless, scoring twice in the Vikings’ 3-1 victory over nondivisional ECC opponent Killingly.

“Last year she started testing me out a little bit,” Belleville said. “I played up top with Meredith Healy and I just stayed there ever since. I started getting used to it.”

“When you lose someone like Meredith, then people have to learn to step in the right shoes,” East Lyme coach Rachel Redding said. “We’ve been working on it as a team, as a group, and they did a great job today. They did their job.”

Redding said playing Belleville at forward in spurts last year wasn’t entirely to prepare her for this year — “You have to move people around to make us successful,” she said. “Everybody’s got to know every position.” But that was part of it.

Belleville scored 2 minutes, 8 seconds into the season on a pass from McCollum to give the Vikings a 1-0 lead, then fellow forward Riddhi Venkatesh, a junior, made it 2-0 on an assist by Belleville.

Killingly pulled within 2-1 at the half on a free kick by Casey Beauregard at the 23:43 mark.

East Lyme had several near misses, as McCollum hit the cross bar with a blast with 11:00 to play in the half and Killingly senior goalie Aryn Nisbet broke up play after play with her aggressive style of ranging out of the goal. Nisbet made a diving save on a shot by Pitruzzello about 12 and a half minutes into the second half to keep Killingly within a goal.

But Belleville scored assisted by Venkatesh with 16:05 to play into an open net.

“Belleville and Riddhi, they played very well today,” said Redding, who said that Belleville is modest, much in the same way Healy was at East Lyme. “Abbie’s one of three captains, but she’s a leader on and off the field. If the balls need to be picked up, she’s the first one picking them up. She’ll put her team first no matter what.”

East Lyme outshot Killingly 14-2. The Vikings will have their next test Saturday against Old Lyme, with the two rivals playing a boys’ and girls’ soccer doubleheader at East Lyme.

“Tonight it clicked. Hopefully it continues to click,” said Redding, whose team finished last year 16-3 overall with ECC Division I and league tournament titles. “They’re finding their way. We’ve got things to work on tomorrow; little things that we have to fix, we fix and we move on from there.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com