Freshmen Faustino Diaz placed 32nd with the time of 22 minutes and 28 seconds, overall out of 180 runners in four mile race for Cerritos College in the Golden West Invitational.

On Friday, Sept. 25 Cerritos tied for eighth place in the Invitational with conference opponent El Camino College with both team earning 234 team points.

The Falcons ran the four-mile course at Central Park in Huntington Beach, California on Friday, Sept. 25 and had a total time of one hour 54 minutes and 18 seconds.

Head coach Bryan Ramos said, “We had an off race. One thing we were working on was pack running and we didn’t have that this meet.”

The Falcons had its top seven runners that participated in the four-mile course.

There was a time in the race where runners who finished the race in a one-minute gap and the Falcons had three runners in the wave of runners.

Staying in a close pack behind Diaz, was freshmen Carlos Mendoza who placed 39th overall finished with a time of 22 minutes and 35 seconds.

After Mendoza finished the race freshmen Ricardo Cano placed 46th overall with a time of 22 minutes and 51 seconds.

About 20 seconds after Cano, Cerritos College had a pack of runners come through.

Freshmen Anthony Lopez had a time of 23 minutes and 12 seconds and finished the race 62nd overall.

While Captain Alejandro Rios consider the race 65th overall with a time of 23 minutes and 15 seconds.

After Rios finished the race freshmen Isaiah Marshall finished the course in 23 minutes and 17 seconds placed 67th overall.

Cerritos had one runner who earned 101th place was freshmen Jerson Ramirez with a time of 24 minutes and 14 seconds.

Rios said, “Overall as a team I think we could have done better. We went into the meet thinking it was going to be an overall flat course so we didn’t prepare well enough and we also lost contact with each other right at the beginning which made it harder to run.”

The Falcons have a bye week this week and look to bounce back when they have their meet in the Brubaker Invitational on Oct. 9th.

Rios added, “With the bye week this week we have time to recover unlike all the other weeks. So instead of coming into the week with hard workouts were going to easy into it so those who are injured or hurting can rest a bit.”