Extended to their limits for the first time this season, the Cerritos College women's soccer team needed to go to overtime to defeat San Diego Miramar College, 3-2 on Saturday. The win in their 3rd Round Southern California Regional Playoff game sends the Falcons (22-0-1) to the CCCAA Final Four, which will take place next Friday at Sunday at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento. Cerritos is looking to win their second straight state title and fourth in school history.

Heading into the second half trailing, 2-1, the Falcons got a goal from sophomore Claudia Lopez (Downey HS) just three minutes into play, while Lopez scored the eventual game-winning goal in the 106th minute of overtime. On the second goal, sophomore April Juarez (Bishop Amat HS/USC) was responsible for the entry pass, while she also assisted on the team's first goal of the game.

"April was able to recover the ball and after she took on her defender, she sent a pass at the net," said Lopez, who now has 24 goals on the year. "The pass was supposed to go to Caro (Carolina Ornelas), but I called her off the ball because I thought I had a better angle. It worked out for us and we got the win."

The win didn't come without some last-minute drama, as the #5-seeded Jets (16-3-3) got a point-blank shot on sophomore goalkeeper Alexis Carrillo (Bishop Amat HS) in the final seconds of the game. On the play, Samantha Schmidt was able to get some separation and when the pass landed on her foot, her shot was stopped by a diving Carrillo, who made nine saves on the day.

"The actually had three players in position to take a shot and I just reacted to what was happening," said Carrillo. "We had a couple of mental lapses on defense, but we did a good job matching them up after that mistake. I was just ready for anything and came though when they got off that shot."

Cerritos took a 1-0 lead 16 minutes into the game when freshman Nayeli Requejo (Bishop Amat HS) scored on a header on a crossing pass from Juarez. It was her team-leading 26th goal of the season. But the Jets needed less than a minute to tie the game when Ninfa Ramirez picked up her 28th goal on a header from a crossing pass. Prior to the end of the first half, Miramar took the latest lead in a game against the Falcons at any time of the year when Mercedes Kercado scored on a shot in the 36th minute of the first half after Cerritos looked for an offside call.

"Miramar scouted us really well," said head coach Ruben Gonzalez. "They played us really well, but we were able to come back and get our second wind. When there was an injury break in the first overtime, the coaching staff talked to the team and told them that they were looking to get into a PK situation. So we wanted to make sure that we continued to attack them on offense and we did that by controlling the ball for almost the entire second overtime."

At the CCCAA State Championships, the women's games will be at 10:00 am on both Friday and Sunday. Should weather play a factor, the games will move to a synthetic field and the times will be at 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. on Friday, with the times remaining the same on Sunday.