The Cerritos College baseball team lost its season opener 9-6, against the Santa Ana College Dons on Jan. 25.

The game was halted due to darkness at the bottom of the eighth inning, before the ninth inning could begin.

Last year, another game was halted at Cerritos College due to darkness that had the game rescheduled to be played at a later date, but for this occasion the players will not get a chance to play the final inning.

Cerritos College’s 2018-2019 baseball season is underway with many new additions to the team, one mainly being a new head coach following the retirement of the previous head coach Ken Gaylord who announced his retirement after the 2018 season after 25 years.

Previously spending five seasons as an assistant coach alongside Gaylord, new head coach Hector Zamora is the eighth head coach in Cerritos College baseball history.

Zamora said, “I’m looking for a positive, prosperous development of the team. If we play as a cohesive unit we’ll be a pretty good competitive team.”

He continued, “To fill in coach Gaylord’s shoes is a big deal, he was here for a long time and did an amazing job, he was my coach, I respect him very, very highly and I hope I can be just as successful as he was.”

Falcons baseball opened the game with a strong 4-0 lead in the first four innings of the game over the Dons helped by a two-run home run hit by freshman second baseman No. 3 Alejandro Bueno.

“Overall we could’ve played better, but we just [have to] build up,” Bueno said.

The team could not hold onto its momentum as the Dons would gain the lead by the sixth inning 5-4.

In the following inning, Santa Ana batted in four more runs to extend their lead over the Falcons 9-4, as the Falcons trailed by five runs, they began to gain back momentum adding a single run in the seventh inning and another in the eighth, only trailing by three runs going into the ninth.

Zamora said, “We swung the bat good, we could’ve thrown a little more strikes and we made some defensive plays that hurt us a little bit, I think it was just self induced and we’re going to learn from it and get better.”

Sophomore third baseman No. 34 Roberto Salazar, Jr said, “I don’t think we met our full potential, going into the first game everybody was a little excited, maybe anxious,”

He continued, “It’s a long season, and I think once we come together we’re gonna do really well, it kinda sucked that they called it due to darkness because we got a little momentum going behind us.”

This being Salazar’s final season, he is hoping to “ball out” and not take any pitch for granted and going into the game leaving everything out on the field because “it’s the only thing you can do when it’s your second year.”

Cerritos College will play the next home season game against Glendale College on Jan. 30.