Running in their first event of the season, the Cerritos College women's cross country team took eighth place at the SoCal Preview Meet on Friday. The Falcons, who entered seven runners in the race, compiled 278 team points, which held off ninth place Fullerton College (285 team points), with Orange Coast coming in first place out of the 30 teams with 40 team points. The team will now head north to run in the Lou Vasquez Invitational on Thursday at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
The top Cerritos runner was freshman Stephanie Ruiz (Western HS), who completed the course in 20:59.41 to be the 37th overall runner out of 201 competitors. It was about :30 seconds before the next Falcon runner finished, but by then, 20 other runners had finished the race. The tandem of sophomores Patricia Hurley and Kaela Crone were less than one second apart, with Hurley coming in 61st place and Crone in 62nd place. The team scoring was compiled after freshman Ariel Melendez (St. Paul HS) crossed the finish line in 21:32.17 for 66th place and sophomore Kathia Avila (Cerritos HS) came in 73rd place with a time of 21:40.23.
Also running for the team were sophomore Isabel Medina (Paramount HS; 93rd place; 22:02.99) and freshman Janet Salazar (Paramount HS; 140th place; 23:26.53).
An Overflow Meet was also held and the Falcons finished in third place out of six schools with 70 team points. Five runners competed, with freshman Maddy Focht (Long Beach Poly HS) coming in ninth place with a time of 21:53.55, while sophomore Natalie Lenarduzzi (John Marshall HS) placed 15th overall in a time of 22:37.36. The duo of freshmen Katherine De La Torre (21st place; 23:02.99) and Angelyca Osnaya-Tyson (25th place; 23:28.34) stayed close during the race, while freshman Neiva Cuevas (Western HS) helped the team with their overall scoring with her time of 24:03.07, which put her in 41st place.