As the 2025 Cerritos College beach volleyball regular season comes to an end and the Falcons head into the playoffs one thing comes to mind, where is their home court?
They’ve played and practiced at Rosie’s Dog Beach in Long Beach all season.
In their conference this season the Falcons face Mt. San Antonio, El Camino, and Long Beach City who have a court advantage by having their own facility on campus.
Falcons players Josie Navarro and Brisa Cortez shared their thoughts on their opposing conference teams having a home court.
“Definitely every home team has their advantage, but especially when they have their facility, they have more of a comfortability knowing that they practice every day, they go to school there every day, and it’s that familiarity that allows them to play to their best ability,” Navarro said.
Cortez added, “Their facilities are really nice and honestly, it’d be nice to have something like that at our school.”
The team practices on Tuesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., after the players have one hour to rush to Cerritos for their classes.
Leeya Rubio shared the struggle with having to rush to the court, “There is a lot more of a rush, especially when it comes to class.
“There are a lot of girls that do have class during practice times, so it’s a lot more, it’s a lot more difficult for them just because they kind of have to rush, and it’s not as easy for them to kind of get to school and get ready for class,” Rubio said.
Taylor Winters and Zoe Lekan who play for El Camino have their own faculty right on campus.
“It’s very nice we’re very fortunate and it’s a very nice facility and kind of stops the wind from coming in too,” said Lekan.
Winters said, “I mean personally my classes are all around the courts so like If I have a class after I kind of just walk straight to class.”
Kari Hemmerling who is the head coach for Cerritos College volleyball during the fall semester started the Beach Volleyball in 2016 to have full-time volleyball year round.
“To get it started here, I told my athletic director when it was Maria Castro at the time, I told her, I said, listen, I’m gonna call you every single time I lose a recruit because they wanna play both indoor and beach,” Hemmerling said.
“All the schools around us, Long Beach, Cypress, Golden West, Rio Hondo, Mount Sac, all these schools that are around us that we’re competing with the most, all have beach volleyball and so the girls get to play indoor and beach and they’re getting better,” Hemmerling stated.
Hemmerling has had conversations with administrators to turn the tennis courts into beach volleyball courts, Falcons men’s and women’s tennis teams have been discontinued since 2021.
The tennis courts will be converted into 20 pickleball courts, but Hemmerling would like to have seven turn into Beach Volleyball courts.
“If we had the ability to do that, and we had some money for that, that would be ideal because if you could make at least five courts is the minimum, pretty much, of what you want, but eight courts, you could host regional, states, whatever, and things would go so fast,” Hemmerling shared.
Hemmerling stores all the beach volleyball equipment in her garage at her house from January to the end of May.
Jeff Miera said, “I would not know the answer to that. I haven’t been here to comment on that.”
The Falcons won their last conference game 5-0 over College of the Desert and now wait for a first-round opponent in the South Coast Conference Pairs Championships and Southern California Team Regional Playoffs.
