In its final invitational before the start of the South Coast Conference Championships, the Cerritos College men’s swimming team competed in a few events at the Pasadena Invitational Friday, April 3.
Head coach Joe Abing said, “Pasadena was just the last way to get more exposure for experience racing. I had pretty low expectations for the meet as far as performance. We swam fine, I was happy with the results.”
Breaststroke swimmer and Captain Marlon Moreno said at the beginning of the season, “We’re gonna try to get better for this year. We did great last season but we’re going to get better this year, hopefully.”
Abing added that they will taper off their practices, “This week and going into next week we’re starting to cut down our amount of yards that we’re swimming and reducing our lift weighting. Today is the last day we’ll be lifting weights until after the conference championships is over.”
Expectations are at a high for this weeks championships. They want to do their best, be the best, and come out strong to prove that what Moreno said at the beginning of the season is valid. Butterfly stroke swimmer and Captain Joshua Owens said, “This week is a big deal! We’re doing everything we can so we’re in perfect shape and ready to go. I feel like we all have really good energy about it and we’re all ready to go.” Owens continues to to say that, “The season has gone by super super fast. But I mean we’ve grown together a lot as a team, it’s been fun.”
Owens also said that he expects to do well at the championships along side Mareno, Angel Rojas and Jason Ly. “The four of us, I mean I feel like we can do pretty well. I think for sure we can make state in at least one or two of our relays. So, I feel like we’re going to do really good as a team all together as well,”
As Abing put it, “The end is near, its kind of what all the hard work is for. In our sport we try and put it all together and hopefully everyone can swim their fastest time of the year at the end.”
The Falcon’s South Coast Conference Championships will be an all day event at East Los Angeles College this week Friday, April 16 through Saturday April 17.
