As sweat drips down their faces, the El Camino Warriors fought through a tough battle at home against the Cerritos College Falcons on Friday, Oct. 5.

Through the heat and the hot turf burning through their cleats, the Warriors held out a strong 18 minutes defensively for the first half over the Falcons.

In the 18th minute, what El Camino believed was a foul on Cerritos, turned out to be a breakthrough goal for the Falcons by Serena Camacho (No. 11). The Falcons led 1-0.

The Warriors kept their heads up, swiping their sweat away, and continued to play a more defensive first half.

However, in the 28th minute, Cerritos forward, Sydney Carr (No. 10), scored the second goal of the game, stretching the Falcons lead to 2-0.

The third goal was made in the 42nd minute to end the first half. Cerritos held the lead, 3-0.

EC goalkeeper, Joelle Niimi (No. 14), played a great game as she saved a total of six goals in the first half. One of the saves was a double save in the 12th minute.

In the second half, Niimi saved five goals, making it 11 saves total for the Warriors.

As soon as the second half started, both teams played defensively as they tried to keep the ball away from the side they were defending.

Neither team scored for the first 40 minutes of the second half, however, in the 49th minute, Camacho got her second shot of the game, which brought Cerritos up 4-0.

It was a tough battle and the Warriors played a more defensive second half, with only one breakthrough by Robin Riggs, No.3, which was saved by Cerritos goalkeeper, Deisy Rodriguez (No. 1).

In the 81st minute, Cerritos got a penalty kick due to a foul on El Camino from Alisa Burial (No. 19).

Taking the penalty kick was Valeria Corrilo (No. 13), who ended the game by scoring the final goal of the game with a 5-0 win for Cerritos.

Cerritos scored twice out of 22 attempted goals towards El Camino in the second half.

It was obvious both teams fought hard as the Warriors assistant coach, Andrew Britton, believed they played a good game.

“Overall the effort was great. It’s a small squad of girls and we’ve had trouble with some injuries, but everyone is working hard and sticking together. When we have everyone here we can compete with anyone,” Britton said.

When asked about the next time they will face Cerritos, Izabel Gutierrez, (No. 8) said, “We were forced to play defensively this game, so we played with a backline of five since we know how good the team is. I think we will keep the same tactic for the next time we play them.”

“I think we held our ground. We stopped a lot of the potential goals,” Gutierrez added.

This game ended in a loss for the El Camino Lady Warriors. Their next game will be tomorrow, Tuesday, Oct. 9, at Mira Costa College. Kick-off is scheduled for 2 p.m.

Update: This story was updated to correct grammatical errors on Wednesday, Nov. 7, at 1:10 p.m.