As the host of the South Coast Conference Championships, the Cerritos College men's cross country team finished in fourth place on Friday. The Falcons finished well off the point totals of the top three schools and finished with 124 team points, with Mt. San Antonio (37 team points), El Camino College (45) and Los Angeles Harbor College (68) earning the top three positions. Cerritos will also host the Southern California Championships at Don Knabe Regional Park next Friday.

Over the four-mile course, Cerritos had sophomore Pablo Calderon (Downey HS) earn a 14th place finish out of 92 runners with his time of 20:40.5, while the next two runners crossed the finish line within three seconds of each other. As part of a small pack of runners, sophomore Jamal Awad (Warren HS) earned 22nd overall in a time of 21:17.4, with the time from freshman Jaime Quinones (Downey HS) of 21:20.0 putting him in 24th place on the day.

There was a dropoff before the final two scoring runners completed the course, with sophomore Ryan Bennett (California HS) earning 38th place overall in a time of 22:18.0, while freshman Patrick Perez (Downey HS) was clocked in 22:22.4, which put him in 41st place. In the span of one minute from when Quinones finished to when Perez finished, 17 other runners crossed the finish line.

Also competing on the day for the Falcons were Adrian Casas (Gahr HS; 23:03.0; 55th place), Darion Blanding (Narbonne HS; 23:04.6; 57th place); Jarrian Harrison (Long Beach Wilson HS; 23:38.5; 65th place), Matthew Alcaraz (Schurr HS; 24:13.3; 74th place), Walter Ramirez (Mayfair HS; 24:45.1; 76th place), Demian Sanchez Lopez (Schurr HS; 25:04.2; 81st place) and Joseph Rivera (South El Monte HS; 27:53.1; 87th place).

Photos by Daryl Peterson