In their first South Coast Conference meet of the season, the Cerritos College men's swimming team was defeated by both Mt. San Antonio College (207-67) and El Camino College (143-125) on Friday at the Falcon Aquatic Center. The Falcons, will take a week off before hosting both East Los Angeles College and Chaffey College in another conference meet at 12:30 p.m. on March 15.
Cerritos opened the day by winning the 200-yard medley relay, with the quartet of Josh Guzman (Warren HS), Billy Catton (La Quinta HS), Rodrigo Baca (Kennedy HS) and Kevin Elizarraraz (Buena Park HS) recording a time of 1:45.31, which barely defeated second place Mt. SAC, who finished in 1:45.99. Baca also won the 100-yard freestyle in a classic battle to the finish. He was able to hold off Edgar Cueva of Mt. San Antonio by the slimmest of margins, as his time of 49.71 was followed by Cueva's time of 49.72. In the 100-yard butterfly, Baca had to settle for second place with a time of 55.27, which was three seconds off the winning time of 52.84 by Mt. SAC's Ethan Trieu.
In the 100-yard backstroke, Baca earned third place points with his time of 56.31 and was edged out of second place by Aziz Jaouhar of El Camino by a little over a second. Elizarraraz also finished third in the 100-yard breaststroke with a clocking of 1:05.92, with Catton a close fourth place in a time of 1:06.53. Guzman swam the 1000-yard freestyle in a time of 11:03.56, which put him in fourth place, with the day capping off seeing the foursome of Catton, Matt Farias (Downey HS), Brian Luque (Salazar y Herrera, Colombia) and Brent Buchan (Kennedy HS) taking fourth place in the 400-yard freestyle with a time of 3:42.86.
Photos by Daryl Peterson
