Women’s Water Polo: LBCC rallies late before falling in overtime to Cerritos

After falling behind big in the first half, the Long Beach City College women's water polo team battled back to force overtime, but ultimately lost 12-11 to visiting Cerritos College in a South Coast Conference game on Wednesday at LBCC.

Long Beach trailed 4-2 after the first quarter and was down 8-4 at halftime before mounting the late-game comeback.

Freshman Ranya El-Tawil opened the third quarter with a goal at 5:35 before Cerritos answered with a goal from Jasmine Villapando with 3:33 left in the quarter.

With Cerritos up 9-5, LBCC went on to score four unanswered goals to tie things up late in the fourth. The Vikings took advantage of a Falcons' exclusion penalty called on Carla Harvey with a goal by freshman Jessica Diaz with 13 seconds left in the third.

Long Beach continued the rally in the fourth quarter with goals from El Tawil (5:23) and sophomore Mackenzie Woolvett (2:07) before freshman Kim Lopez tied the game 9-9 with her goal with 1:37 left.

Cerritos regained the lead moments later when Angelica Hernandez scored at the 1:24 mark. But the Vikings weren't done as Lopez notched her second goal with an impressive shot from deep to tie the game at 10 with just 21 seconds remaining to send the contest to overtime.  

In the first overtime, LBCC got a goal from sophomore Jackie Rojas at the 1:53 mark which was followed by a nice save from freshman goalie Taylor Faust and Long Beach was up 11-10 heading to the second overtime period.

But in the final OT, the Falcons tied the game at the 2:05 mark with a goal from Hernandez. A little over a minute later, Hernandez poured in the game-winner with 1:01 left after a controversial foul was called in front of the LBCC cage. Cerritos was able to hang on for the hard-fought 12-11 victory.

El Tawil led Long Beach with three goals. The Vikings got two goals each from Rojas, Lopez, and Diaz.

Hernandez scored a game-high seven goals to lead Cerritos (9-1 overall, 2-0 SCC).

Long Beach, now 4-2 overall and 1-1 in conference play, returns to action this weekend (Sep 21-22) when it will compete at the Mt. San Antonio College tournament.

Photo by Chris Ruiz