Running in a light rain for the majority of the competition, the Cerritos College men's cross country team finished in 15th place at the 3C2A State Championships Saturday morning. Running at Woodward Park in Fresno, the Falcons finished with 377 team points which was the second best finish of any other team from the South Coast Conference. In all, there were 24 complete teams to run in the state championships. Cerritos had failed to qualify as a team for the state championships in the past two seasons.

The first Cerritos runner to complete the four-mile course was Tyler Villanueva (Warren HS), whose time of 21:41.0 was the 55th best out of 180 total runners. He held off three other runners who finished within three seconds of him, while Villanueva was behind two others that crossed the finish line two seconds before him. A scant five seconds separated the second and third Falcon runners to complete the race, with Luke Dias (Fountain Valley HS) placing 73rd overall in a time of 21:59.4. He was in the middle of three runners who all finished within a span of three-tenths of a second. There was a large block of runners to finish the race in that five-second time period. Joshua Melendez (St. Paul HS), who came in 82nd place overall, posted a time of 22:04.3, as 12 runners completed the course during that five-second time period.

Next up for the Falcons was Noah Addison (Long Beach Poly HS), who was clocked in 22:17.7 which put him in 96th place overall and also part of a block of runners. There were nine more runners who finished within five seconds of each other in this group, with Addison right in the middle. The fifth Cerritos runner to complete the team scoring was Marcus Hughes (Carson HS), whose time of 22:34.0 placed him 111th overall. Also running on the day for Cerritos were Jacob Cosio (California HS), who came in 103rd overall with a time of 22:22.6 and Matthew Alvarez (Warren HS), who finished in 166th place in a time of 24:06.8.