The Cerritos men’s swim team won seven of the events that were presented against Rio Hondo College and Pasadena City College at home on March 31 at 10 a.m.
Mother Nature sure sided with the swimmers of all three colleges to give them a perfectly warm sunny day.
Pasadena started off strong by winning each distance, from 50 to 1,000-yard freestyles but the Falcons placed just behind with second-place finishes.
With the fans cheering Cerritos on, the Falcons continued to push through with the next challenge.
Pasadena won the 100 and 200-yard backstroke but Cerritos took over the 100-yard breaststroke as Sophomore Axel Pedroza took home a winning time of 1:08:08 and got Cerritos the momentum they needed.
The 200-yard breaststroke was the most impressive as three Falcons players, Silvestre Chavez (2:30:21), Axel Pedroza (2:36:05) and Daniel Benitez (2:36:75) took up the top three slots over Pasadena and Rio Hondo.
Now with the butterfly technique, Pasadena took first place in the 100-yard race but the Falcons took first place in the 200-yard distance as they continue to dominate the longer distances.
Cerritos also took the 200-yard IM (which is butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle) with Silvestre Chavez scoring 2:10:12 as his final time.
Joel Rivas got an easy victory on the 1-meter diving as he was the only competitor and the Falcons also crushed the 200 and 400-yard freestyle relays.
The Falcons continued their winning ways as Silvestre Chavez, Axel Pedroza, Kobe Hurtado (Cerritos HS) and Richard Montanez won the 200-yard relay race.
Hurtado said that he felt like performed well during the game but said he needs to improve upon extending underwater more, which is, “staying underwater longer before getting up.”
Falcons Sebastian Rico, Dominic Hernandez, Richard Montanez and Abimael Anorve won the 400-yard freestyle with the other four Cerritos College swimmers also taking second place.
The final outcome was the same for each, they beat Pasadena City 156-87 and Rio Hondo 188-68.
“We trained hard the last couple of weeks and performed well,” Head Coach Joe Abing said, “We had a lot of different swimmers.”
Coach Abing said that the team needs to keep training hard and focused the rest of the season, “We have to be consistent, being at all practices and just doing our best.”
The Falcons will be playing in the South Coast Conference Diving Championships on April 14 at 10 a.m. at El Camino and the opponent is unknown so keep a good watch on the Cerritos Falcons website for more information.
