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Photo by
Juan Velez.
Cerritos College defeats Golden West, 1-0
in their home-opener. |
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After jumping out to
an early 1-0 lead against Golden West College in their
home-opener on Friday afternoon, the Cerritos College
men's soccer team saw that score hold up for a victory.
The win keeps the Falcons, ranked #1 in the state and #2
in the nation, unbeaten on the year, as they improved to
5-0-1. They will get an 11-day rest before returning to
action when they host Orange Coast College at 2:00 p.m.
on September 22.
Just seven minutes into the match, sophomore defender
Fabian Perez
(Bellflower HS) sent a 30-yard pass to
sophomore midfielder
Salvador Melendrez (Long Beach Millikan
HS). Seeing that the Rustler goalkeeper was out of
position due to the long pass, Melendrez fired a shot
over his outstretched hands from about 25 yards out.
Cerritos kept up the offensive pressure over the next 15
minutes, including point-blank shots by Melendrez,
sophomore forward
Luis
Gonzalez (Long Beach Millikan HS)
and freshman forward
Cesar
Castillo (Eagle Valley, CO HS),
but were turned away each time.
After a halftime in which head coach
Benny Artiaga
addressed the team's inability to penetrate the high
pressure Golden West threw at them, while becoming a
lateral and negative team playing into their opponent's
strengths, the team settled down and held off any
pressure they faced in the second half.
Both teams had good scoring opportunities in the second half,
which forced freshman goalkeeper
Danny Lizama
(Duarte HS) to make two point-blank saves to
help preserve the shutout win. He finished the match
with four saves.
"I think we have to take some positives (from this
match), which was our gritty way of holding on," stated
Artiaga. "We told our guys it's not always going to be
pretty and the important part was we escaped with a
victory. There are definitely some things for us to
improve and we will address them at practice." |
