Last year, the Cerritos College and Golden West College men's soccer teams played to a pair of scoreless draws. Their second meeting came in the Southern California Regional Finals, with the Falcons advancing to the CCCAA Final Four on penalty kicks. On Friday, the two teams met again, and through the first 75 minutes, it looked as though the teams would once again finish a game without either team scoring. However, in the 78th minute, freshman Bryan Ortega (Cesar Chavez HS), the state's leading scorer, fed a nice pass to freshman Kevin Diaz (Connections Academy HS), who chipped in a shot that would turn out to be the lone goal of the game in a 1-0 victory.

The win by the Falcons (2-1-1) was their second in a row and extended a new unbeaten streak to three games (2-0-1) after an opening-season loss. The team will now travel to Oxnard College next Friday for a 4:00 p.m. game.

Cerritos had a pair of first-half chances that were thwarted by both the goal post and crossbar. Freshman Ernesto Cueva (Bassett HS) was victimized by the goal post off a corner kick in the 23rd minute, while Diaz saw his shot in the 32nd minute hit off the crossbar through a crowd of players from a free kick.

Aside from those two missed opportunities by the Falcons, neither team had much of a chance to get on the scoreboard. Falcon sophomore goalkeeper Jordan Aldama (North Torrance HS) made one easy save in the first half, while Rustlers goalkeeper Misha Marson turned away the lone shot on goal in his 45 minutes of action.

In the latter 45 minutes, Cerritos was able to get four shots on goal, with the fourth one finding its way into the net. As for Aldama, he made a save diving to his right off a shot from Jessy Sotelo in the second half and finished the game with three stops.

Photos by Daryl Peterson