Runners improved their individual times and closed the gap among the top five runners as they prepared to compete in the Mt. SAC Invite Friday at 3 p.m.

The women’s team tied for second place with Mt. SAC, earning 67 points while Cerritos took first place with 58 points at the Irvine Invitational. Riverside and Golden West College finished in third and fourth more than 10 points behind EC.

Evelyn Lopez finished seventh place overall and first for EC with a time of 20:38, improving her time from last year at the same invite (21:52).

Second place for EC was Dinora Moran who finished tenth in the overall race; 20:33, followed by Valerie Tucker; 21:06, Cora Webber; 21:10 and Lori Cardenas; 21:14.

The EC athletes had a good start with the runners maintaining their positions strong throughout the race and even closed stronger at the home stretch than they did at Golden West.

“The competition was good,” Moran said. “We faced schools like Cerritos and Mt SAC, which are always strong.”

EC kept a strong top five group coming in with a 46 second difference between the first and fifth place runners.

That was an eight-second improvement from the previous meet at Golden West where the first and the fifth runners had a 54-second difference.

It was an even better improvement from the Cuesta College Invite, where the time difference was 1:59.

“We’re running consistently strong,” assistant coach Sean Sheil said. “We need to keep the top five as close as possible.”

Despite not having a front-runner, EC keeps placing within the first three positions each race, displaying consistency and strength among the team.

“Without a real front-runner, it gets somewhat hard,” Sheil said. “But we have good depth, and depth is more important and that’s why we’re scoring well.”

The team also improved the time gap between its fifth place and eigth place runners, which is something coach Lofgren feels the team needs to desperately improve on.

The Mt. SAC Invite will be EC’s last competition before going to the South Coast Conference Championship on Oct. 30 at Pierce College.

“Every meet up until today has been to prepare to compete at regional,” coach Dean Lofgren. “The early part of the season is all developmental; it’s used to determine how fast each runner should go out in every race.”

Once the team reaches the regional competiton at Cuesta College, it will race against 23 other schools of which only the top 10 will move on the State Championships at Fresno.

At state, the top 10 teams from Northern California will compete against the best 10 teams in Southern California, using the five runners of each school who finish first at regional.

Physical endurance will determine the success of the team and who gets to compete after regionals, as the competition at each invite will get stronger.

“We just need to work harder,” Moran said. “That’s the way we’ll be ready.”

For the coaching staff, endurance isn’t much of a concern. Lofgren said that improvement is being made during each practice and at every meet.

“The team tends to know where it stands physically,” Lofgren said. “They are all aware of their capabilities.”

The highly competitve teams involved in the Mission Conference only benefit the Warriors to prepare for each race.

“Every week, we see the best teams in the region,” Lofgren said. “We don’t face teams that can be considered weak.”

The team can’t afford to waste anytime and even during their off week, the athletes dedicate themselves to strenthening their abilities and correct their errors.

“Competition is tough, so we really don’t have any days off,” Lofgren said