The Cerritos College football team won its season-opener against Saddleback College 27-24 on Saturday, Sept. 6.
Head Coach Frank Mazzotta said after the game, “Well, our first goal … is always to win the opener. And this year, our opener happens to be (against) one of the best football teams in California, so not only did we win the opener like we wanted to do, we beat a good football team.”
Both offenses made some critical mistakes throughout and both defenses were able to pull out some great stops here and there.
The game opened with a moment of silence for the deaths of Police Chief Richard Bukowiecki, soccer-star Jasmine Cornejo and hall-of-fame coach Nancy Kelly.
Afterward, the Falcons won the coin toss and chose to receive to start off the game.
The opening drive for the Falcons saw the team pick up four first-downs, one coming off a penalty and ending the drive with a touchdown.
The defense also sacked the quarterback in the opposition’s first drive, but it forced it to only score a field goal.
Both Cerritos and Saddleback’s defenses played exceptionally, with both of them forcing three interceptions a piece throughout the game. Even though Saddleback forced Cerritos to throw three interceptions, it wasn’t able to capitalize on the turnovers like the Cerritos offense.
In one instance, Cerritos Quarterback Jimmy Walker threw an interception in the first quarter, but then was able to come back in the second quarter to throw a touchdown to his wide receiver.
“There’s always another play. As a quarterback, (you) have a short memory. That’s what I’ve always been taught,” said Walker after the game while describing his composure on throwing a touchdown pass after throwing his first interception of the game.
The interceptions kept on coming for both teams, with Walker throwing his second interception right after the Falcon defense was able to pick off the Saddleback quarterback.
The first half ended with the Falcons intercepting the Saddleback quarterback and Walker taking a knee. The score was 13-10 with Cerritos leading.
In the second half, the running game was a big factor for the Cerritos offence, as it was able to score one rushing touchdown and a play-action pass touchdown – one being scored in the opening drive of the second half and the other coming in the middle of the fourth quarter. By the time the passing touchdown was scored, Cerritos got a marginal lead of 27-10 with 6:43 remaining in the game.
Despite the comfortable lead, Saddleback found a way to comeback and score back-to-back touchdowns to bring the game within three points.
By the time Saddleback scored its 24th point, the game was out of its hands. With only 56 seconds being left in the game it failed to retrieve the onside kick.
With the Falcons recovering the onside kick in the final seconds of the game, the offence took the field and ran a couple of quarterback knees to end the game.
Free Safety Daveyon Monette shared his thoughts about the win, “It was a good game; first one of the season. We opened up well. We’re going to get better every week.”
As for Walker, he said, “It was ugly, but a win is a win. We got it done in the end. Defense really played well, O-line was outstanding (and) everybody made some mistakes. I did, of course… but, overall, it was a great win, great team win.”
The Falcons take on Orange Coast College next Saturday, Sept. 13, with kickoff starting at 7 p.m. at Falcon Stadium.
