The Cerritos College men’s swimming team will be swimming in its next meet at the Golden West Invitational on Friday, April 4.

Joe Abing, men’s swimming coach for Cerritos College, wants this invitational to be another step toward his swimmers’s ultimate goal.

“It’s another opportunity to get more experience, getting ready for our conference championships,” Abing said.

Abing wants the team to use this invitational as a way for his swimmers to compete with different teams.

The Cerritos College men’s swimming team has competed in an invitational at Golden West, during that meet it managed to place 5th as a team.

Acccording to coach Abing, his swimmers are feeling the weight of all of their training and swim meets that they worked for so far into the season.

“Physically, the team is actually pretty tired right now because we have been training really hard, but that’s what we do at this point of the season.”

“It’s good for us to try and push through our fatigue both physically and mentally. If we can still swim well when we’re tired, when we’re rested, we’re going to swim really fast,” Abing said.

Marlon Moreno, Cerritos College men’s swimmer, thinks that his team will be ready to do their best when they compete at Golden West Invitational II.

“I think if we practice hard we can be better than them, they always think that Golden West have the best guys, but we can be better than them,” Moreno said.

Moreno’s main focus coming into this meet is to improve on his 100 freestyle swim and 50 freestyle swim, even though his body is feeling the pains of his swim meets and training. In the previous Golden West Invitational, he managed to finish first place in the 50-yard backstroke.

Alan Pae, men’s swimmer for Cerritos College, states that not only are him and the team working out physically but they are also working with the mental part of their training.

“We do mental pictures of our races, we think about our starts, our turns and our swims. We push ourselves and we think of the goals we want to achieve,” said Pae.

Pae’s goal is to make it to the state championship, with the Golden West Invitational another stepping stone to his season aspirations.

Abing believes with all of the hard work his team puts into the the season, it will makethem that much faster as a team.

“When we get closer to the end ( of the season) we’ll rest and taper a little bit, hopefully we swim our fastest at the end of the season,” said Abing.

The Cerritos College men’s swimming team’s next meet will be at the Pasadena Invitational on April 5.