With a chance to move back into a tie for first place in the South Coast Conference, the Cerritos College men's soccer team took an early 1-0 lead against defending state champion, and first place Mt. San Antonio on Tuesday. However, that lead didn't hold up, as the Mounties controlled almost all of the second half, which included scoring a pair of goals, and posted a 2-1 win over the Falcons. The loss is the second in a row for Cerritos, who drop to 8-4-2 overall and 4-3-0 in the SCC, while Mt. SAC improves to 12-1-0 and 6-1-0. They entered the day in a tie for second place with El Camino College, who owns wins over both the Falcons and Mounties this season. Cerritos will now travel to Los Angeles Harbor College for a 4:00 p.m. game on Friday, which also marks the start of the second round of conference play.

Early on, the Falcons came out with a great deal of intensity and beat the Mounties to every loose ball and peppered goalkeeper Adrian Topete with high percentage shots. In the 10th minute, freshman Mario Guerrero (University HS) saw his header go just over the crossbar in the team's first of several scoring chances. But a little more than a minute later, Guerrero was able to feed a bouncing pass in the box to freshman Jose Rivera (Torrance HS), who fanned on his first shot attempt. But once the ball settled down, he was able to turn and drill a shot into the far corner for an early Falcon lead.

There were a flurry of Cerritos chances before the end of the first half, as freshman Ludwing Vargas (Salesian HS) saw his hard shot deflected to freshman Nicholas Escalante (California HS), and was stoned by a sliding Topete, who came out of the net to cut off the angle in the 21st minute. Not more than five minutes later, sophomore Oscar Enriquez (Cabrillo HS) missed an open net on a sliding shot attempt, and a fourth scoring chance was turned away when Escalante sent a shot toward the goal that the Falcon players and bench thought was touched with a hand ball.

But once the second half started, it appeared as though all of the momentum had shifted to Mt. San Antonio, who finally started putting pressure on freshman goalkeeper Benito Gonzalez (Long Beach Wilson HS). The Mounties were able to tie the game in the 52nd minute when Abraham Placito scored on a nice corner kick from Armando Ochoa. That started an onslaught of offensive pressure against the Cerritos back line, which required Gonzalez to make a breakaway save against Miguel Gonzalez, as well as a save against Anthony Mangold-Caudle.

But in the 63rd minute, it was Ochoa who broke the tie with a magnificent free kick from about 30 yards out that went under the cross bar past the outstretched hands of Gonzalez. The Falcons didn't get many scoring chances in the final 45 minutes and dropped their second game in a row.

Photo by Daryl Peterson