Competing primarily against four-year colleges, as well as several club teams, the Cerritos College men's cross country team came in 10th place at the Santa Clara Bronco Invitational on Saturday. Running in an 8K community college and open category, the Falcons finished with 289 team points and were middle of the pack of the 21 entries. Only two Northern California community colleges finished ahead of Cerritos. After taking next week off for training, the team will compete in the South Coast Conference Championships, which will take place on October 27 at Ken Malloy Regional Park in Harbor City.

Running in their longest distance race of the year, the first Falcon runner to complete the course was Tyler Villanueva (Warren HS), as his time of 25:54.1 was good for 54th place overall out of 305 total runners. He was followed by Joshua Melendez (St. Paul HS) with his 112th place time of 26:37.6, with Noah Addison (Long Beach Poly HS) not far off with his 126th place time of 26:49.0. With so many runners on the course, there were many packs of runners with all fighting for position as they crossed the finish line.

Cerritos then saw Luke Dias (Fountain Valley HS) posting a 138th place time of 26:57.0, while Jacob Cosio (California HS) was clocked in 27:15.2, which put him in 155th place overall. The grouping for the Falcons was still pretty good, but there were packs of 5-10 runners all finishing within several seconds of each other throughout the course.

Also running for the Falcons were Ben Ramos (California HS; 27:34.8; 172nd place), Matthew Alvarez (Warren HS; 28:31.3, 222nd place), Edwin Matias (Bell Gardens HS; 28:41.0; 226th place) and Jeff Chmiel (Lakewood HS; 28:57.1; 232nd place).