Getting a preview of the South Coast Conference championship course, the Cerritos College men's cross country team finished in fourth place at the Mt. San Antonio Invitational on Saturday. The Falcons, who will run the same course on October 28, finished with 116 team points and trailed a pair of conference opponents, as the host Mounties won the meet with 18 team points, while El Camino College barely edged Cerritos with a third place total of 106 team points. There were a total of 18 schools competing at the meet.
Covering the four-mile course, sophomore Abraxaz Sanchez (Schurr HS) ran a great race, as he placed 11th out of 180 runners with a time of 21:41.8, which was a minute off the winning time. Mt. SAC produced seven of the top 10 finishers, while Sanchez was the next conference runner to complete the course. Part of the next pack of runners to finish, freshman Daniel Ramos (Warren HS) was able to pull ahead of several runners at the latter stages of the race and turned in a 19th place time of 22:08.6. A 25-second dropoff until the next finisher saw four El Camino runners cross the finish line before the next Falcon, which allowed them to pull ahead in the team scoring. That next runner was freshman Adrian Casas (Gahr HS), who placed 37th overall in a time of 22:33.7. He finished at the same time as one Warriors runner and one second behind another.
The final two Cerritos runners to finish off the team scoring completed the course within one second of each other. Freshman Angel Chavarria (Western HS) was the 42nd runner to finish with his time of 22:45.0, while sophomore Luis Munoz (Downey HS) took 44th place overall when he was clocked in 22:46.1.
Also competing for the Falcons on the day included Alberto Cano (Norwalk HS; 23:09.3; 59th place), Ryan Bennett (California HS; 23:21.2; 67th place), Cristhian Macias (Gardena HS; 23:24.1; 70th place), Jamal Awad (Warren HS; 23:26.0; 72nd place), Miguel Lopez (Downey HS; 24:49.5; 113th place), James Penn (Mayfair HS; 25:00.4; 116th place), Aleksie Dominguez (St. Paul HS; 26:18.0; 133rd place), Moises Rodriguez (El Rancho HS; 27:07.8; 144th place), Clay Green (Los Alamitos HS; 27:50.9; 150th place), Darion Blanding (Narbonne HS; 28:03.6; 151st place) and Walter Ramirez (Mayfair HS; 28:26.6; 156th place).