The Music and Sports Festival anticipated greater community engagement due to the Larry Hernandez concert, but the turnout was lower than expected.

Hernandez performed a concert on Saturday, July 30, at the Cerritos College football stadium.

The concert had a low turnout in terms of tickets sold and crowd attendance. However, during the concert Hernandez actively engaged the crowd. Hernandez called his mother on stage and sang a song to her, he sang and danced with his son and kissed his partner, Kenia Ontiveros.

During his performance Hernandez also threw red roses, t-shirts promoting his reality TV show “Larrymania,” and beauty gift bags for women.

Event organizers and Hernandez were shocked at the low turnout.

Ontiveros stated, “I thought we were going to have more people [here] so we were all shocked about that. At the end he was like, ‘You know what, it doesn’t matter if there [are] five people there, I’m still going to give the best of me.’… I was happy because he gave a great show.”

Hernandez and event organizer Cerritos College Women’s soccer Head Coach Ruben Gonzalez adjusted to the situation and decided to move everyone in attendance to the VIP section of the stadium.

Gonzalez stated the decision was made “to make sure that they [the audience] had a good time we’re already here and we’re going to have a good time and that’s what ended up happening.”

Ontiveros commented, “The people that were here were happy. They weren’t bored; they were singing along, they were clapping, they were jumping, and they were dancing,” she said.

Gonzalez spearheaded this campaign and decided to bring it to President Jose Fierro.

“It was an idea I had about three or four years ago that I just thought about bringing something to raise money for student scholarships and I thought about a music and sports festival. This year I was a part of the founding leadership with Dr. Fierro,” Gonzalez said.

He also stated that an event of this magnitude would need a year to plan out, but the school was able to complete the project in four months.

Dr. Fierro said, “I think it was a really good event, it was well organized, I think [Gonzalez] had a great idea and actually pulled it off. We hope to this again next year and definitely to make it an annual event.

The event was made possible with the help of sponsors like Lieberman Broadcasting.

Promotions Manager for Lieberman Broadcasting, Inc. Richard Salgado, was the media sponsor for the event.

He said, “The proceeds for the tickets and food sales were going to go to benefit the scholarships for the students here.”

“We had [television] talent (Romi De Frias, Abel Alvarez, Rodrigo Serrano) here signing autographs, and we are also going to have a radio DJ that’s going to be here [on Saturday] to MC the event on QueBuena (a radio station).”

Increasing interaction between the local community and Cerritos College was another goal for the festival.

Dr. Fierro noted, “I think we should continue to involve the community in our campus activities […] we have a very supportive community here in the cities that we serve.”

During the event a spokeswoman went on stage and encouraged the crowd to vote and also assisted Hernandez as he filled out an application, as well as his mother and partner.

Salgado said, “Our station is behind an initiative campaign called “Yo Soy El Voto”, [and] we are encouraging the community to register to vote if they haven’t yet. We had register forms out and were helping to fill them out.”

Complaints arose due to low profit from vendors and disappointment in expected attendance.

Maritza Lizarraga, the daughter of the owner of El Marinero, stated, “Friday we made about $140, the afternoon booth made $108 and [VIP] made probably like $100. If you’re going to think about what we made for profit, we didn’t make any profit.

“We lost. But we are happy because the name is out there; people got to eat, we got interviewed, we got publicity so that’s what we are happy with, that was a plus, but if you’re considering business wise we did not do good whatsoever, not even what we expected,” she noted.

Juan Valencia, from Tacos Chihuahua stated, “They told me [the profit yesterday] was kind of bad. I think [the profit] is going to be less [on Sunday] because less people are going to come.”

Valencia claimed that the concert on Saturday assisted in slightly higher profit than Friday or Sunday.

Despite the low turnout and the low sales Dr. Fierro plans to keep working towards raising money for scholarships.

He said, “We are going to continue to work on scholarships. Our goal is to raise enough money in the next five years to make sure that every student that needs it can have a scholarship at Cerritos College.”

Fierro continued, “We want to remove the financial barriers for our students so if you need the money we will find a way to get it so you can go to school.”