For the second time in three season, the Cerritos College men's cross country team finished in first place at the Coach Morley XC Classic, which was held in San Diego on Friday. The Falcons posted seven of the top ten team scoring points to finished with a perfect score of 15 team points, while the other four complete teams came from the San Diego area. Next Friday, the team will head back down to San Diego to run in the San Diego Mesa Invitational, which will take place at NTC Park at Liberty Station.

Although the top finisher at the meet ran unattached, Cerritos had the top four scoring positions, with Joshua Melendez (St. Paul HS) registering a time of 22:17.9 over the four-mile course to lead the way. The winning time came in at 22:12.6. Finishing within eight seconds of each other, the Falcon trio of Edwin Matias (Bell Gardens HS), Aiden House-Ortiz (Lakewood HS) and Matthew Alvarez (Warren HS) represented the next three scoring competitors. Matias touched up in 23:01.1, followed by House-Ortiz (23:06.5) and Alvarez (23:09.7).

Not too far behind for Cerritos was the tandem of Luke Dias (Fountain Valley HS) and Marcus Hughes (Carson HS), who finished in respective times of 23:23.2 and 23:25.6 to finish in seventh and eighth places overall. Jeff Chmiel (Lakewood HS) rounded out the top 10 of the competition with his time of 23:49.7 out of 51 total runners. The Falcons also received a 19th place time from Angel Serrano (Legacy HS), who crossed the finished line in 24:49.0.

Also running for Cerritos on the day were David Morales (El Rancho HS; 25:08.4; 23rd place), Jose Ortiz (Norwalk HS; 26:37.5; 28th place), Justin Smith (Lakewood HS; 27:10.8; 30th place) and Franklin Pedregal (Downey HS; 30:17.2; 39th place).