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Photo by
Juan Velez.
Falcons advance to 3rd Round of the
playoffs with a 3-2 win
over LA Harbor. |
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Freshman forward
Cesar Castillo (Eagle Valley, CO HS)
scored a beautiful one-touch goal in the 83rd minute
to break a 2-2 tie and the Cerritos College men's
soccer team came away with a 3-2 home win over Los
Angeles Harbor College in the 2nd Round of the
Southern California Regional Playoffs on Tuesday
afternoon. The win by the #3-seeded Falcons (19-2-2)
sends them to the 3rd Round on Saturday where they
will face the winner of the #2 Mt. San
Antonio-#10 Moorpark winner. Should the Mounties
win, they will host Cerritos, while a Moorpark upset
will keep the Falcons at home.
"We'd love to get
a chance to face Mt. San Antonio again," said head
coach
Benny Artiaga. "We'd find out
who's the best team in the state is after the game.
They'd also be facing a pissed off group who will be
using the last game's result against them (a 2-2
tie) as motivation."
The Seahawks
(13-6-3) were able to find it within themselves to
come back after falling behind twice, but the
Falcons capitalized on a great play by Castillo to
score the eventual game-winning goal. On the play in
the 83rd minute, sophomore
Salvador Melendrez (Long Beach
Millikan HS) fed a pass to Castillo just inside
the box and he quickly turned and scored past LA
Harbor goalkeeper Greg Williams.
"That was such a
beautiful goal by Cesar," added Artiaga. "Here's a
guy who's very mild-mannered and unassuming, but has
the ability to come up in this situation and score
such an important goal. He was aware of where he
was, where the keeper was and where he had to put
the ball in order to score. Great play all the way
around."
The Falcons opened
the scoring in the seventh minute on a beautiful
free kick from freshman
Eddie
Valencia (Los Angeles Wilson HS)
from about 30 yards out. He sent a shot into the
upper corner that Williams was unable to reach,
giving Cerritos an early lead. But the Seahawks
struck back in the 28th minute when Alex Chavez
worked his way around to Falcon defenders and sent a
hard shot that deflected off the hands of freshman
goalkeeper
Danny Lizama (Duarte HS).
Just as they did
in the first half, Cerritos struck quickly in the
second half. This time, it only took three minutes
for sophomore
Luis
Gonzalez (Long Beach Millikan HS)
to score. Sophomore
Pedro
Chavez (Cabrillo HS) dribbled
the ball across the top of the box and found
Gonzalez working his way into scoring position.
After receiving the pass, Gonzalez sent a ball into
the far corner as Williams was still following
Chavez on the play. Once again, the Seahawks tied
the game, as Moises Balderas scored on a penalty
kick in the 73rd minute after Falcon defender
Paul Montalvo (La Sierra HS)
was called for a hand-ball in the box.
"I give a lot of
credit to LA Harbor and the way they played," said
Artiaga. "They made us play 90 minutes and they
played with a lot of heart. "But we don't ever quit
on our home field and we always make sure we take
care of business. I'm real proud of the way our guys
rebounded each time Harbor scored and refused to
buckle under the pressure. I thought our back row of
Paul,
Timmy Seo
(Los Alamitos HS) and
Fabian
Perez (Bellflower HS) are a
unique trio and they did an excellent job. Although Jhovanny
Hernandez (Huntington Beach HS)
was 2-0 in goal against Harbor this season, I
decided to go with Danny, who hasn't lost a game all
season. I went with my gut feeling and had to stick
with it. He came up huge for us."
Scoring
1st 2nd F
Los Angeles
Harbor 1 1 2
Cerritos 1 2 3
Goals:
Los Angeles Harbor:
Alex Chavez (28th minute); Moises Balderas (73rd
minute, penalty kick).
Cerritos: Eddie
Valencia (7th minute); Luis Gonzalez (48th minute,
Pedro Chavez assist); Cesar Castillo (83rd minute,
Salvador Melendrez assist).
Shots on Goal:
Los Angeles Harbor:
10 shots
Cerritos: 14
shots
Keeper Saves:
Los Angeles Harbor:
Greg Williams - 7 saves
Cerritos:
Danny Lizama - 5 saves
Records:
Los Angeles
Harbor: 13-6-3 - Seeded #6
Cerritos:
19-2-2 - Seeded #3
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