Mauricio Carrillo has made his transition from defense in 2014 to offense in 2015 look easy. Carrillo also made his varsity debut look easy.

Carrillo produced a hat trick in the Aug. 17 season opener at West Rowan, leading a 3-1 victory for Davie’s varsity soccer team in Mark McKnight’s debut as the new coach. It was not McKnight’s first game as varsity coach; he was an interim coach for the final 10 games of the 2012 season.

Carrillo scored the only goal in the first half. He made it 2-0 before West got on the board.

“That was not on our goalie,” McKnight said of West’s goal. “That was on our defense. It was a free kick and two of my midfielders went up for headers and went up too early. They misplayed the ball.”

Carrillo secured the win with his third goal. It was unassisted after the first two were assisted by senior Josthin Servellon. It was the first hat trick in 73 games, dating to Clayton McKenzie’s three goals in a 5-0 win over Parkland in 2011. Think about that for a second.

“He played JV as a junior last year, and he played JV defense last year,” McKnight said. “I put him up front and he scored two goals in (three) scrimmages, so he’s put up some points. When he scored in those scrimmages, I started playing him at forward. He’s a bigger kid. He’s around 200 pounds and he doesn’t get knocked down. And he’s pretty quick. He can run past them, too.”

Senior Andrew Whitesell was lights out at center back.

“He played the whole game,” McKnight said. “At one point, I had a freshman in there with him at center back and Whitesell controlled the whole game in the back.”

It was a great way to start the season on a couple levels. First, the War Eagles are coming off a dismal 4-17-1 season that marked the third straight losing season. Secondly, “we didn’t do that great in the scrimmages,” McKnight said. “But we did a lot better today after a full week of practice. And I was missing two seniors and a junior.”

Notes: Davie beat West 3-0 last year and has six straight wins in the series. … Davie has 13 seniors and seven juniors.