USC redshirt freshman Kaylin Martin went to the grass in a bid for the ball. She was still prone on the field when a nearby Hawaii player went to blast it upfield but instead, inadvertently, hit the sphere right off Martin’s face.

Martin didn’t flinch an inch. She got up and grinned.

“She’s a tough one,” USC coach Keidane McAlpine said with a laugh after the fifth-ranked Trojans dispatched the Rainbow Wahine 3-0 in the teams’ season opener at the Manoa Lower Campus grass field. “No, we pride ourselves on being tough and doing the work in the offseason and the weight room and just from a mentality standpoint. They bring it on the field every time.”

The Pac-12 power was dominant in possession and connection for much of the 90-minute clash on a hot Thursday afternoon. USC, the 2016 national champion, posted a winning percentage of at least .800 the past three years.

“I was very proud of them,” ninth-year UH coach Michele Nagamine said of her players. “That’s a team that is gonna give a lot of people fits. They are No. 5 for a reason. They have numerous weapons. It’s like, just reload, lock and load. There are threats everywhere.”

>> Photo Gallery: UH women’s soccer: Hawaii vs. USC

The first event of the 2019-20 Manoa athletic calendar was unusual: It was the Wahine soccer program’s first official game on its practice field since 2013 because its regular surface at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium was recently damaged. Occasional flickering of a portable scoreboard was the only issue as about 200 people took in the game from fold-up chairs or on the grass.

Monday’s 3:30 p.m. game against San Francisco and two more next weekend will be similarly played on campus.

Eleven of USC’s 13 shots were on frame. UH did not record an official shot until Kayla Ryan got one off in the 57th minute with UH trailing 2-0 thanks to first-half goals by USC’s Penelope Hocking and Tara McKeown.

“With a team like USC, when we make a mistake they’re good enough to jump right on it,” said senior goalkeeper Lex Mata, who made some acrobatic stops among her eight saves. “So … we kind of gave them the opportunity to cash out. And so we just clean that up in ourselves, and we don’t see things like that happen.”

Savannia Gomez launched a beauty in the 85th minute over an outstretched Mata when UH failed to clear a blocked shot.

UH drew a USC yellow card in the box right after that. Forward McKenzie Moore took the penalty kick going for the first Wahine goal of the season, but it caromed off the left post.

Amid avid lineup shuffling by Nagamine, two Wahine players — Kayla Watanabe and outer back Natalie Dixon — went down with leg cramps in the second half.

“Obviously it was hot, but we’ve been training in this, so that’s no excuse for us,” said Watanabe, a Mid-Pacific alumna and graduate transfer from Idaho who was one of six players making her UH debut. “So, we just need to go back and hydrate a lot more.”