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Photo by
Juan Velez.
Freshman German
Rivas scored his second goal of
the year against East Los Angeles
College. |
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In their first
meeting of the season against rival Mt. San Antonio
College, the Cerritos College men's soccer team
absorbed their only loss of the season. On Friday at
2:00 p.m. at Cerritos, the two teams will meet up
for the second time with South Coast Conference and
national implications at stake. The Mounties
currently lead the conference and are ranked #2 in
the nation, while the Falcons are in second place
and ranked #4 in the country. However, Cerritos is
the top-ranked team in the state based on power
rankings. Last year, the Falcons defeated Mt. SAC
four times, including a 1-0 decision in the state
championship game.
On Tuesday, the
Falcons prepared for the game by posting a 3-0
conference win at East Los Angeles College by
scoring three times in the second half. With a much
smaller field to work with, Cerritos took some time
to adjust to the field of play and finally broke
through in the second half.
"Playing on such a
small field with as hard a surface as their turf, it
really made it difficult for us to spread our game
out like we are accustomed to doing," said head
coach
Benny
Artiaga. "To their credit, East LA took
away the small spaces we tried to work with and we
found ourselves playing right into their game. Their
intent was to make it a short-sided game and it
worked in the first half."
But when the
Falcons found some space in the second half, they
took advantage of them and broke the scoreless time
in the 64th minute. On a corner kick from sophomore
Luis Gonzalez (Long Beach Millikan
HS), freshman
German
Rivas (Monrovia HS) scored his
second goal of the year. Drawing most of the
attention on the play was sophomore
Paul Montalvo (La Sierra HS),
whose 6-foot 2-inch frame and physical play took up
a lot of space, which left Rives in position to
score.
In the 79th
minute, Rivas got the play started again with a
beautiful side-to-side ball that was played by
Gonzalez. He headed the ball backwards to freshman
Alexis Burguete (Bell HS), who
scored into an open corner of the net. Artiaga felt
the pass by Rivas was one of the best he's seen all
season and was the reason the goal was allowed to be
scored.
"You know, at
halftime I really had a long talk with our strikers
and told them that they needed to pick up their game
and help our team break out of the struggles we were
having," added Artiaga. "And to the credit of the
entire team, we were very disciplined in the second
half and it really paid off. "I thought
Andrew
Robles (St. John Bosco HS) and
Juan Mejia (Paramount HS) did
a great job from their midfielder position and
Timmy Seo (Los Alamitos HS)
was very good from the sweeper position."
The Falcons closed
out the scoring in the 85th minute when freshman Briant
Reyes (Downey HS) sent a
crossing pass from 40 yards out to Gonzalez, who
beautifully headed the ball into the net, scoring
his 20th goal of the season. Freshman goalkeeper
Danny Lizama (Duarte HS) was a
last-minute decision in goal and he recorded his
fourth shutout of the season, while making one save.
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