Apparently, it doesn’t take Rachele Burns long to master a skill.

“I’m not very good at shooting three-pointers usually,” said the Gorham freshman, “but I’ve been practicing them for the last week.”

Her seven days of work came in handy Saturday, as Burns (25 points) hit four shots from behind the arc – all in the second half – to keep the visiting Rams afloat after Cheverus (0-3) fought back from an early 16-point deficit. Gorham (1-1) held on, 65-64.

“She’s a very good athlete,” Rams coach Sherry Coyne said of her first-year guard. “And she’s a tough kid, too.”

Gorham went up by three in the first quarter behind good free throw shooting (6-of-7) and rebounding, as both Emily Jenkins and Ashley Seiler (four points each) scored on put-backs.

After Cheverus forward Mallory Pelkey scored on a steal to start the second quarter, the Rams reeled off 15 points in a row. Burns had six of her team’s points in that span, including a pair of buckets off spin moves in the paint. She assisted on two other hoops.

Gorham was up 29-13 by the time Pelkey (18 points) scored again, five minutes after her previous basket. It looked as though the Stags were done.

But a few quick hoops in the last minutes of the first half cut the margin to 11, and then midway through the third quarter Cheverus was energized by the play of Heidi Allen (10 points).

The forward scored six points in less than a minute – and would have had more had she not failed to convert the back-ends of two potential three-point plays.

Burns and her backcourt partner Kelsey Wilson (15 points) went coast-to-coast on back-to-back plays to get the lead back up to 10 with 4:28 left in the period, but a pair of inside hoops from Pelkey kept the hosts close and Dana Proscia’s three-point-play tied the score at 41.

Gorham escaped the third period with a two-point lead, but the game was tied again in the first minute of the fourth until Burns stroked her first three of the quarter.

When consecutive baskets from Jordan Mezoian (14 points) put the Stags ahead, 51-49, with 5:02 to go, Burns answered with another trey 13 seconds later to take the lead back.

Ashley Michaud (10 points) scored four points off rebounds to keep the Rams ahead, and then, with 2:03 in the game, Burns third three-pointer in five minutes gave her squad a 61-56 lead.

In the last minute, free throws by Nicole Robitaille (five points) and Wilson kept Gorham ahead, despite Proscia (17 points) scoring two buckets in the final 10 seconds.

“I think we came out in the second half knowing we were ahead and that got to us,” Burns said. “It’s good that they scored. It made us pick up our defense.”

While the Rams managed to hang on for their first win of the young season, coach Sherry Coyne wasn’t pleased that her team’s comfortable second-quarter lead had evaporated.

“We depend on our defense, and we were flat on defense, and they were beating us up the floor,” the coach said. “We had a hard time stepping it up. Offensively we couldn’t get things going; defensively we kept trying to change things up.”

Still, Coyne acknowledged, it was just the second game of the season. Due to weather-induced postponements, Gorham had yet to develop any kind of rhythm.

“We’ve figured out what we need to work on,” she said, “and we’ll get better.”