The Falcons Men’s swim team placed 20th at the CCCAA State Championships a three-day event Thursday, April 30 to Saturday, May 2 that took place at East Los Angels College.

It was a series of unfortunate events, breaststroke swimmer Captain Marlon Moreno was struck with a bad stomach virus and had to withdraw from 200-yard medley relay and 400-yard freestyle relay, as well as swimming in the 100-yard breaststroke and 100-yard freestyle. Which lead the team to place twentieth place with 33 points.

Head coach Joe Abing said, “Weekend was overall good. We did have one unfortunate even. Marlon Moreno got food poisoning and missed the last part of the meet.”

Even with his illness that started Thursday night, Moreno fought through prelims and the Falcons came in twelfth place finishes in it’s relay races and tied for seventeenth place with 20 points the first day, and were scheduled to compete in four events on the second day.

With Moreno’s illness becoming worse, he was unable to compete and had to withdraw from another event on the second day.

But even with Moreno’s stomach virus, the foursome posted a time of 1:38.00 in the 200-yard medley relay and were .1 second away from breaking another school recored which placed Cerritos in twentieth place with 27 team points.

Butterfly stroke swimmer and Captain Joshua Owens said, “We came up .1 second shy of another school record but didn’t quite have enough.”

On the final day of championships backstroke swimmer Jason Ly, earned an eleventh-place finish in the 200-yard backstroke. The Falcons finished in twentieth place with 33 points.

Owens added, “We had a good season overall. It just didn’t come together how we wanted it to in the end. But hey, we had an awesome time getting to where we got and we are proud of every moment!”

The Falcons finished second place at conference. Breaking the school record in the 400 medley relay with the squad of Marlon, Owens, Ly and Angel Rojas. “I’m proud of this year’s team. I am looking forward to next year,” said Abing.