On Thursday, the Cerritos College women's swimming team set two new school records in the 200-yard freestyle relay and the 100-yard IM at the South Coast Conference Championships. One day later, a second school record was broken, as the Falcons won the 200-yard medley relay with a time of 1:52.81, which earned the team 40 points. As a team, Cerritos slipped into second place behind host Chaffey College and have 422.5 points, compared to the 458 points by the Panthers. The final day of the conference championships will start at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday.

In winning the 200-yard medley relay by three seconds over their closest competition, the quartet of freshman Carla Harvey (Potomac Falls, VA HS), sophomore Katherine Gabayeron (Cerritos HS), freshman Raquel Gabayeron (Cerritos HS) and freshman Angela Covarrubias (Paramount HS) also broke the school record by .01 second. That group, Gina Kim, Jenel Lopez, Natalie Peng and Jessica Ku, set their record in 2010.

Three other school records were close to being eclipsed on the day. In the 200-yard IM, Katherine Gabayeron finished in second place with a time of 2:13.88, which was just shy of her record time of 2:13.07 that she set in last year's state championships. As for Raquel Gabayeron, she won the 50-yard butterfly in 26.95 and was just short of missing the school record time of 26.32 that was set by Peng in 2009. Freshman Milena Hernandez (Cerritos HS) also came in sixth place in that race with a time of 28.92. Harvey almost broke the record time of 28.29 in the 50-yard backstroke set by Stephanie Rosero in 2008, as she registered a clocking of 28.50 and finished in second place. Sophomore Yuridia Vela (Schurr HS) shared fourth place in 30.46, while sophomore Janine Loera (Paramount HS) placed sixth in 31.60.

The 800-yard freestyle relay team slipped all the way to fifth place with a time of 8:46.13 and consisted of Covarrubias, freshman Teresa Zuniga (California HS), Harvey and Vela, while Kathering Gabayeron also turned in a second place time of 1:58.56 in the 200-yard freestyle.

Photo by Daryl Peterson