In their final event of the season, the Cerritos College men's cross country team came in 16th place at the CCCAA State Championships at Woodward Park in Fresno on Saturday. Three of the top four places on the day were from schools in the South Coast Conference, while the Falcons finished with 429 points for their finish.
With 168 runners in the event, there were plenty of packs of runners completing the course at the same time. The first Cerritos runner to cross the finish line was Jaime Quinones (Downey HS), who was part of a pack of 22 runners that all finished within 10 seconds of each other. His time of 21:44.5 put him in the middle of that group and earned him a 64th place overall, with the next Falcons runner at the tail end of that pack. Clocking in at 21:51.8, Pablo Calderon (Downey HS) earned a 78th place finish, while another :23 seconds passed by before the third Cerritos runner crossed the finish line. But the time Jamal Awad (Warren HS) turned in his time of 22:12.3, there were 22 other runners to finish the race, with Awad taking 101st place overall.
Next up for Cerritos was Vraj Patel (Cerritos HS), who completed the course in a time of 22:53.7, which earned him a 141st place finish, while the final scoring runner was Adrian Casas (Gahr HS), who checked in with a 145th place time of 23:00.9. Also competing on the day for the Falcons were Ryan Bennett (California HS), who was the 161st runner on the day and posted a time of 23:48.3, while Darion Blanding (Narbonne HS) posted a 163th place time of 24:02.7.