When a team
finishes off their season winning the state
championship, there probably aren’t going to be
many paybacks that need to be fulfilled. But,
for the Cerritos College men’s soccer team, they
had a two-year payback they wanted to take care
of to start the year. The Falcons, who won their
first state championship in school history last
season, opened their season by ending a two-year
losing streak to Golden West College by posting
a 3-1 win on Tuesday. The team will look for two
wins in as many days when they host Compton
College in a non-conference game at 4:00 p.m. on
Wednesday.
Showing their
remarkable speed and athleticism, the Falcons
opened up a 2-0 lead in the first half, as the
team controlled the tempo of the game. In the 25th
minute, sophomore
Billy Gutierrez (Huntington Park HS)
played a ball through to freshman
Gerardo Torrez (Norte Vista HS),
who split the defense and struck it in the upper
right hand corner of the net. Less than 10
minutes later, freshman
Alex
Munoz (Centennial, Corona HS)
scored a truly remarkable goal, as he bent a
shot from an incredible angle from outside the
18-yard box into the left corner of the net.
After a period of some sloppy
play by Cerritos that allowed the Rustlers to
score, the team regained control of the game and
closed out the scoring in the 80th
minute when freshman
Michael
Paz (California HS) scored on a
set piece on a nice pass from Gutierrez.
Sophomore goalkeeper
Ivan
Mercado (Paramount HS), who was a solid
early-season starter last season and wound up as
the best back-up goalkeeper in the state,
recorded the win.
According to head coach
Benny
Artiaga, “With the amount of pressure we
put on Golden West, this game could have been
out of reach in the first half. But, to their
credit, they hung in and made a game of it. Our
team defense was good, but not great, and our
offense really controlled the majority of the
game. As a result, that made it a little tough
to judge defensively where we need to tighten up
and improve.”
