Back on September 16, the Cerritos College women's soccer team defeated Ventura College, 2-1 in a non-conference game. Since then, the Pirates had gone 14-0-1, setting up their CCCAA Playoff game on Saturday. The Falcons, seeded #3, were extended to overtime before finally defeating #7-seeded Ventura, 3-1, which advances them to the CCCAA State Tournament. Cerritos (19-2-2) will face Sierra College (16-5-3) on Friday at 7:00 p.m. at Mt. San Antonio College. It will be the second meeting of the season between the two teams, as the Falcons posted a 2-1 win in their fourth game of the season."

"We get an opportunity to play for a state championship, which is what we've been working on all season," said head coach Ruben Gonzalez, who guided his teams to state titles in 2007 and 2008, while they reached the semi-finals in 2010. "I think we played our worst half of the season in the first half today, but we were able to take it to another level in the second half. Ventura played a very sound game, but I think that we wore them down with the size of our field and the amount of conditioning we do to prepare for games like these."

The Pirates (16-6-1) took a 1-0 lead in the 66th minute when freshman goalkeeper Maria Santoyo (Universidad de Guadalajara HS) rushed out of her net to try and get to a loose ball. But Gualalupe Magana was able to get to the ball and chipped it past Santoyo for a goal. That seemed to wake up the Falcons, who turned up the heat offensively, and tied the game six minutes later.

With freshman Cristal Yantuche (Lakewood HS) controlling the ball in the middle of the field, she sent a pass toward the box where freshman Claudia Lopez (Downey HS) was there to control the ball and scored through two defenders and goalkeeper Katelyn White to tie the game.

The contest was extended to overtime, but not until both teams had chances to take the lead. Not long after the Falcon goal, sophomore Lauren Nanez (La Mirada HS), who scored the third goal, was unable to get much on a shot off a corner kick. Ventura also had a chance with the aggresive Santoyo coming out of the net on three other occasions to run down loose balls.

In the second minute of extra time, sophomore Karina Sandoval (Universidad de Guadalajara HS) dribbled the ball down the sideline to the end line, where she lofted a crossing pass to freshman Jazmin Aguas (San Pascual HS), who tapped the ball in for the first lead of the game. Just as they did in the first overtime period, Cerritos struck quickly when sophomore Gabriela Zamarripa (Artesia HS) used her speed on the outside to get deep into Pirate territory and sent a pass back to Nanez, who controlled the ball, turned and drilled a line drive into the back of the net.

The defense, which was solid all day, held off the Pirates the remainder of the game with Santoyo posting four saves. Cerritos outshot Ventura 21-7 in the win.

Photo by Daryl Peterson