With a slew of injuries forcing
the Cerritos College men's soccer team to play
without some of their top players, the Falcons
looked to freshman forward
Andy Rico
(Lynwood
HS)
for offense. Rico scored his first career hat trick
in a 5-1 South Coast Conference win over Los Angeles
Harbor on Tuesday afternoon to improve the team's
record to 8-3-3 overall and 2-1-2 in conference
play. In the five conference games, Rico now has six
goals and seven on the season. Cerritos will now
play the second of three straight road games when
they travel to Long Beach City on Friday for a 4:00
p.m. contest.
"This was a good win for us after
a disappointing loss to Mt. San Antonio," said head
coach
Benny
Artiaga,
referring to a 2-1 setback last Friday. "There was a
sense of urgency today, knowing we can't afford to
give up any more points in this tough conference.
With all the injuries we had today, everybody
stepped up and I think we played just about
everybody."
Missing for the Falcons were
sophomore forward
Joshua
Meyer
(Cerritos
HS),
the team's leading scorer, who was injured in the
game against the Mounties, while sophomore
defenseman
Marco
Pulido
(South
Gate)
and midfielders
Victor
Roman
(Loara
HS)
and
Juan
Davila
(Birmingham
HS)
also missed the game due to injuries.
That led to more scoring
opportunities for Rico, who opened the scoring in
the fourth minute when he headed in a pass from
sophomore midfielder
Jose Diaz
(Salesian
HS).
But it was a great individual play by Diaz that put
Rico in position to score, as Diaz was able to jar
himself loose from a Seahawk defender outside the
18-yard box and sent the lob to Rico. It wasn't much
longer when Diaz pulled the same play, jarring
himself away from a defender and then crossed a nice
pass to a wide open
Jessi Lopez
(South
Gate HS),
who scored an uncontested goal on a header.
It was more of the same in the
second half, as Rico scored his second goal on a
header from a pass by freshman
Ivan Perez
(Chaparral,
NV HS),
while Rico and Lopez finished out the scoring for
the Falcons. Sophomore goalkeeper
Miguel
Lopez
(Vocational
Tech, NV HS)
earned his third win of the season by making two
saves in the win. 