In an early test to see where all of the teams from Southern California stack up, the Cerritos College women's cross country team came in fourth place at the SoCal Preview Meet on Friday. The Falcons, competing at Woodley Park in Van Nuys, had three of their runners come in the top 15 and finished the invitational with 105 team points. They trailed only Glendale College (51 team points), College of the Canyons (68) and South Coast Conference rival Mt. San Antonio College, who placed third with 79 team points. The team will run at Central Park in Huntington Beach next Friday in the Golden West Invitational.

Placing seventh out of the 167 runners that finished the 5K course was sophomore Ariel Melendez (St. Paul HS), who was clocked in 18:42.6. The next two Falcon runners were part of a tight pack, and freshman Marylu Pulido (Whittier HS) was able to come in 11th place in a time of 19:04.9, while sophomore Stephanie Ruiz (Western HS) was right behind her in 19:07.2, good for 14th place. After freshman Maria Orosco (Katella HS) crossed the finish line in 19:24.4 to come in 22dn place, there was a 1:01 dropoff before the fifth and final team scoring runner finished.

Freshman Stephanie Perea (Downey HS) took 51st place and finished in 20:25.0. The other two runners and completed the seven person team were freshman Joanna Bautista (Downey HS) in 78th place at 21:02.6 and sophomore Janet Salazar (Paramount HS), who posted a time of 21:18.6 to finish in 87th place.

There was an overflow meet that also took place and Cerritos came in first place overall with 18 teams entering at least one runner. Freshman Elsa Vazquez Vallin (Warren HS) was the overall winner with a time of 20:47.6 and helped the team finish with 48 team points and edge out second place Bakersfield College, who had 52 team points. All six runners finished in the top 18 of the 69 total runners.