With only five regular season games left on their schedule, the Cerritos College men's soccer team has slipped into fourth place in the competitive South Coast Conference after their 2-1 loss to Long Beach City College on Tuesday. The Falcons (8-3-5, 3-2-4, 13 points), who are 0-1-3 in their last four games, saw the Vikings (6-4-5, 4-3-2, 14 points) move ahead of them after today's game. Cerritos will look to get back in the win column on Friday at 2:00 p.m. when they host ECC Compton Center.
In a hotly contest game, Cerritos had several scoring chances slip away, as they looked to get one more pass connected before taking a shot on goal. But when they did get their shots at the net, Viking goalkeeper Daniel De Haro was there to make 10 saves. In the waning minutes, the Falcons had two corner kicks and freshman Connor Johnson (Long Beach Millikan HS) was turned away twice. Prior to that, freshman Christian Carrillo (Katella HS) had a point blank shot, but De Haro deflected the ball away.
Long Beach City took a 1-0 lead late in the first half when Evair Marin completed a pass in the box to Hector Solis, who had room to turn and get off a clean shot that went under the diving arm of Cerritos goalkeeper Ivan Del Campo (Granada Hills Kennedy HS). It was a 2-0 Vikings lead in the 53rd minute when Marin struck from just inside the box, as he found Del Campo coming out to play him and he sent a shot to the back of the net.
The Falcons were forced to play with 10 men for the last 14 minutes after freshman Steve Martinez (Salesian HS) received his second yellow card. That seemed to wake the team up, as they became more aggressive on offense. It paid off less than three minutes later when sophomore Michael Bautista (Norwalk HS) threaded a pass through two defenders to Carrillo, who scored under the arm of De Haro.
On the day, Cerritos outshot the Vikings, 20-11 with 11 of those shots on net. Both teams also combined for 11 yellow cards.
Photos by Daryl Peterson
