During a seven-year period (1998-2004), the Cypress College women's soccer team won three CCCAA State Championships, and were facing a Cerritos College team that has won three of the last six state titles. On Tuesday, the #1-seeded Falcons (21-0-1) handed the #9-seeded Chargers (12-7-3) a 3-1 loss to advance to the 3rd Round of the Southern California Regional Playoffs. Cerritos, the defending state champions, will host the winner of the College of the Canyons-San Diego Miramar game at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday. The winner of that game will move on to the CCCAA State Championships, which will take place at Cosumnes River College.

For the outset of the game, the Falcons took the action to Cypress and appeared to have taken a quick 1-0 lead on a goal by sophomore Claudia Lopez (Downey HS) in the 12th minute. But Cerritos was called for offside on the play, but continued to attack. They needed just five more minutes to take a 1-0 lead when freshman Nayeli Requejo (Bishop Amat HS) scored her team-leading 25th goal of the season. The play started with sophomore Jasmine Cornejo (Artesia HS) rushing the ball down the far sideline. Although they weren't able to get off a shot, freshman Carolina Ornelas (Artesia HS) was able to regain control of the ball and fed a ball into the box, where Requejo beat goalkeeper Chloe Sutkowski.

One of the biggest plays of the game happened right before the end of the first half. The Falcons were able to strike again when sophomore April Juarez (Bishop Amat HS/USC) defelected a high pass into the net for a 2-0 lead with less than a minute remaining before the end of the half. Freshman Cassidy Hodson (Villa Park HS) hustled to keep the ball in play and when she turned toward the goal and saw Juarez, she lofted a pass over the Cypress defenders to Juarez, who put away her 17th goal of the year.

Even bigger than that was on the ensuing rush by Cypress, as Jade Perez took the ball from midfield, beat three players and got off a point-blank shot on sophomore goalkeeper Alexis Carrillo (Bishop Amat HS), who came up with a huge save. The late goal, followed by the big save allowed the Falcons to maintain their momentum into the second half.

In the 59th minute, Cerritos took a commanding 3-0 lead when freshman Cassie Reyes (Bishop Amat HS) bent in a corner kick toward the far post. Cypress, looking to try and clear the ball, had it deflect off a player and into the net, giving Reyes her second goal of the season. The Chargers scored their lone goal on a penalty kick by Alex Ishihara with less than a minute left in the game.

Photos by Daryl Peterson