With four athletes finishing in the top 10 positions, the women’s team won third place at the South Coast Conference Championship.

The women believe they are ready for the Southern California Regional Championship at Cuesta College Saturday at noon.

EC missed second place to Mt. SAC, who had 49 points, while Cerritos scored 43 and the women had a 1:22 split between the first and fifth runners.

Valerie Tucker, 20:02, was first for EC; Dinora Moran, 20:13, second place; Evelyn Lopez, 20:25, third; Cora Webber, 20:34, fourth and Lori Cardenas, 21:24 rounded the top five.

“We had four finish in the top ten,” coach Lofgren said. “On any given day we could have a couple in the top five.”

Tucker, Moran, Lopez, Webber and Cardenas finished sixth, seventh, ninth, 10th and 23rd respectively in the general race. Cardenas ran with a partially sprained ankle that has yet to heal.

“Lori seems to be doing better,” Lofgren said. “The sprained ankle might have broken her concentration a little because it’s harder to focus on the race.”

EC has consistently placed in third place all season, coming behind Orange Coast who has been undefeated the last two years.

Cerritos has been coming in second and hasn’t placed behind any school other than Orange Coast.

“We’ve competed against the best three teams in Southern California,” Lofgren said.

At Cuesta, 24 teams will participate which will attract close to 200 athletes to the competition. That’s a big difference from the 65 women which competed Friday.

“The team is going into the meet ranked fourth,” Lofgren said. “We’ve been better than most teams.”

From the So Cal meet, only the top 12 teams will go to the state championships.

“We just all have to click on the same day so we can walk away with first place,” Lofgren said. “We can place anywhere from first to sixth place.”

Lofgren doesn’t pressure the team and only asks the members to go out and do what they know.

“We don’t pep talk the team,” Lofgren said. “They know what they’re doing.”