After opening up its 2025 season on the road with three tournaments, the Cerritos College Falcons men’s water polo team found themselves at home for the first time this year and topped the Santa Monica College Corsairs with a 17-8 victory on Wednesday, Sept. 17.

“We had three weekends in a row of tournaments, travelling, with some real tough competition,” Cerritos head coach Joe Abing said, “but always good to be able to play your own pool.”

The Falcons capitalized on an early 5-0 lead in the first period, while a combination of seven different scorers and a team total of 17 steals helped seal the victory.

Freshman Marco Uribe led the team with five goals and without its starting goalkeeper, Tripp Johnson and Geo Fagiani split the duties and totaled seven saves.

Utility Ruben Martinez, who contributed with two goals and two steals of his own, said, “we’re just trying to press. Press them out as much as we could.”

“We’re just kind of pressuring them a bit, touching them a bit, but you want to put your hands up so they don’t get a foul. That just keeps the clock running. We do that for 20 seconds and after, the last 10 seconds, we’re just waiting to counter out,” he said.

With this win the Falcons improve to 7-6 overall on the season ahead of conference play.

Abing said the expectations for his team are to train hard in practice and give their best every day, and Martinez shared the work he and his team would be handling in practice to get better at pressing the opponent and getting better at communicating with each other.

“We’ve always tried to be super competitive in our conference,” Abing said. “This was a non-conference game. They’re just helping us get better for those conference opponents.”

Cerritos will open up its conference play on Wednesday, Sept. 24 against 3-6 Chaffey College who the Falcons defeated 19-7 in the Cypress Tournament earlier this season.