After coming in 20th place in state last season the men of the Cerritos College swim team are looking to prove they are better.

Head coach Joe Abing said, “Every year is a different team, but we always have the same goal of reaching our full potential, hopefully with a lot of hard work we will have another year with a lot of great performances.”

Returner and Sophomore Daniel Loeza said of last season, “last year one of our swimmers got sick that kind of put a damper on our season.”

Last season at the state championship swimmer Marlon Moreno got ill and was later forced to withdraw from the competition which caused his relay team to back out also.

Loeza said of this season, “I’m excited because it’s my last season swimming here so I just wanna have fun with the team and hopefully we make it to first in the championship.”

Mitchell Bowman, who is also a returner said, “Better than last year for sure.”

Isiah Gayton who is a returner as well said, “Honestly we have a lot more depth this year and I think we will do really well in conference.”

Freshman Paul Vega said, “I’m a little nervous this is my first season in college so everything is still new to me but I’m excited. In high school I didn’t travel and this season we’re going to San Diego [Palomar].”

This season the men look to start their season at Palomar on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 5 and 6.

Last season, at the Palomar tournament the team put up a season high 676 team points at the Waterman Festival, and they look to do the same thing this season.

“We always swim well at the Palomar meet. It is a fun meet with a lot of different relays than we normally swim. The meet will be the first one, so it will help us establish where we are in terms of our times,” said Abing.

Loeza said of this upcoming weekend, “with the talent we have this season I think we should have a repeat of last season’s performance, a lot of our freshmen are really talented.”

He is also excited about playing Mt. Sac and Long Beach.

Abing said if he had one word to describe this team it would be “Champs.”