It's official!
The Cerritos College women's soccer team, fresh
off their second straight state championship,
were named the National Soccer Coaches
Association of America (NSCAA) Division III
(non-scholarship) national champions in the
latest poll that came out on Tuesday. The
Falcons, who finished second in the country last
year, capped off their unbeaten season (22-0-4)
with a 4-2 overtime win over Santa Rosa College
on December 7 at College of the Canyons.
The Cerritos
men's team, who won their second state title in
three years, finished second in the national
ranking for the second time. Back in 2006, the
team finished #2 in the men's poll and matched
the same placing after defeating Mt. San
Antonio, 1-0 in the state championship game.
Cerritos (22-4-1) moved to the #2 spot from 13th
in the last poll before the state tournament and
trailed only Herkimer (NY) Community College,
who concluded their season, 20-3.
But the
national title, the first for either soccer
programs, has four-year head coach
Ruben Gonzalez ecstatic. "This is a
great honor for the program. It's exciting for
the team, the school and the community. It's a
great honor for the sophomores, who put two
years into the program and believed in the
coaching staff and the program. We thought we
would have gotten it last year, but it's a great
feeling to finally get it."
There was an
outside chance the men might capture the
national title, especially after their run at
the end of the season, where they went 10-1-0 in
their last 11 games, with wins over nationally
ranked teams in six of those games. The Falcons
also defeated Mt. San Antonio four times on the
year, while they handed Santa Rosa College their
only loss of the season in the state semi-final
game. The Bear Cubs were the remaining unbeaten
team in the country when Cerritos defeated them,
2-1 in overtime.
According to
men's head coach
Benny Artiaga, "First off, I want
to congratulate Herkimer on their national
championship; I'm sure they are very deserving.
The way we finished the season, it's hard to say
aren't the nation's best team. Playing in our
conference, which is the toughest in the nation,
we have to play all of them twice, so it's tough
for anyone to go undefeated. It seems like a
team from our area needs to go undefeated to be
considered the the national title. Even though
the system is the way it is, we can only control
what we do on the field."
