Taking on a scrappy Los Angeles City College team on Friday, the Cerritos College men's soccer team scored three first half goals, which proved to be enough in a 3-1 South Coast Conference victory. The Falcons (8-4-2, 2-1-1), who sit in second place in the SCC South Division, will travel to take on crosstown rival Long Beach City College (7-3-3, 1-1-2) in a 2:00 p.m. conference match.

Even with the win over the Cubs (4-8-2, 2-1-1), Falcons head coach Benny Artiaga still believes his team hasn't yet reached its stride.

"We need learn how to manage games better," said Artiaga. "We should have probably been up 4-5 to zero at halftime, but we got careless with the ball. Then we got caught in their style of soccer and did not play well in the midfield in second half. Our guys need to learn you'll defend less when you can keep the ball better and manage games. But hey, I've been doing this long enough to enjoy ugly wins."

It only took Cerritos a minute to strike, as sophomore Mark Cristino (Downey HS/UC Riverside) finished a play that was set up by freshman Adrian Aguilar (Banning HS). Cristino was able to bury his second goal of the season, which put LA City back on their heels early into the match.

The Falcons struck again in the 20th minute mark, as freshman Miguel Gonzalez found freshman Adrian Ibarra (Downey HS) alone and he was able to finish the play by firing a shot into the back of the net. They closed out the scoring before halftime when freshman Chris Ramirez (Bishop Mora Salesian HS) put his fourth shot into a visiting team's net and Cerritos had all the scoring they would need.

Sophomore goalkeeper Steven Ruiz (Cathedral HS) turned away three of the four Cubs shots to earn the win in net.