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Photo by
Juan Velez.
Miguel Hernandez scored the first goal
against the Long Beach City Vikings. |
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Needing a win to
recapture their confidence after a loss last Friday,
the Cerritos College men's soccer team showed much
improvement on their offense, while the defense was
able to stand up to another test. The end result was
a 4-2 South Coast Conference home win against Long
Beach City College on Tuesday afternoon. The Falcons
(14-3-2 overall, 8-2-1 SCC) will now play under the
lights on Friday when they travel to Los Angeles
Harbor College for a 6:15 p.m. conference game. The
loss dropped the Vikings to 7-7-3 overall and 4-4-3
in conference play.
Long Beach City
displayed some offensive pressure early in the game,
but the Falcon defense withstood any attack that the
Vikings could muster. Cerritos broke the scoreless
tie in the 24th minute, thanks to some hard work
from sophomore
Luis
Gonzalez (Long Beach Millikan HS).
The state's leading scorer dribbled hard down the
left side, turned the corner on a Viking defender
and sent a pass along the goal line that was fanned
on by freshman
Miguel
Hernandez (Cabrillo HS). But
freshman
Eddie
Valencia (Los Angeles Wilson HS)
was able to get off a shot that was saved by LB City
goalkeeper Luis Romero. Hernandez was there for the
rebound and chipped it into the net for the goal.
The Vikings tied
the game up just four minutes later on a throw-in
that bounced past the Falcon defenders to the foot
of Daniel Vasquez, who tapped the ball past freshmen
goalkeeper
Danny Lizama (Duarte HS). But
prior to halftime, Cerritos took a 2-1 lead when
freshman
Ruben
Gonzalez (Artesia HS) handled
a long ball and worked around Long Beach defender
Manuel Bautista. Romero came up to defend Gonzalez,
who sent the ball across to freshman
Cesar
Castillo (Eagle Valley, CO HS)
for a chip shot into the net.
It only took Long
Beach City three minutes into the second half to tie
the game on a strange goal. It appeared as
though Falcon defender
Paul Montalvo (La Sierra HS)
was going to win a ball in the air, but it got past
him and Robert Tapia lightly tapped the ball. He
caught Lizama leaning the wrong way and the ball
rolled slowly under his arm in the net for the
game-tying goal.
After that goal,
the Falcons turned up the heat on offense and also
turned to Gonzalez, who scored one of his patented
"you have to be there to believe it" goals.
Challenging three Viking defenders, Gonzalez worked
his way through traffic and effortlessly turned and
drilled a hard left-footed shot into the lower
corner of the net for his 25th goal of the season.
Cerritos added an insurance goal on a perfect
centering pass from Castillo that freshman
Alexis Burguete (Bell HS) took
right out of the air and scored into the net.
Scoring
1st 2nd F
Long Beach City
1 1 2
Cerritos 2 2
4
Goals:
Long Beach City:
Daniel Vasquez (28th minute); Roberto Tapia (48th
minute, Osvaldo Sepulveda assist).
Cerritos: Miguel
Hernandez (24th minute; Eddie Valencia assist);
Cesar Castillo (38th minute, Ruben Gonzalez assist);
Luis Gonzalez (62nd minute); Alexis Burguete (75th
minute, Cesar Castillo assist).
Shots on Goal:
Long Beach City: 9
Cerritos: 19
Keeper Saves:
Long Beach City:
Luis Romero - 9 saves
Cerritos: Danny Lizama
- 7 saves
Records:
Long Beach City:
7-7-3 Overall, 4-4-3 South Coast Conference
Cerritos: 14-3-2
Overall; 8-2-1 South Coast Conference
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