With the rain gone long enough for the track to dry, the men’s and women’s track and field teams got their season under way last weekend.

Today at noon, the men’s and women’s track and field team will host a South Coast Conference mini meet against the following colleges: L.A. Southwest, L.A. City, Pasadena and Long Beach.

“It’s going to be a pretty good meet and it will be good for us to run since the rain had slowed us down lately,” coach Dean Lofgren said.

The SCC mini meet has a slight chance of being canceled depending if it rains or not.

Saturday, the men’s and women’s track and field team will compete at the Cal State Long Beach “Jack Rose” Relays.

“The players have been working out for about four months, they should be ready to go,” assistant coach Sean Sheil said.

Relay teams and all the competitors in field events are still being put together.

Last week the team finally opened its season at the Cerritos College Invitational with high expectations from the coaches.

Shammer Dawson, Danyelle and Gabrielle Meniefield and Star Thurman met those expectations, as they won their 800-meter relay race easily with a time of 1:46.87.

“Nobody could touch us,” Dawson said. “We were unstoppable.”

But in the 1600-meter relay, the team of Linsey Brown, Dawson, Gabby, and Danyelle lost and finished fourth.

“We could have done better; we were one of the favorites to finish first or at least second in the sixteen hundred,” Brown said. “We were very disappointed”.

Some athletes have to work much harder than others.

“It’s not fair that my teammates and I run in four races, and our competitors only run in one,” Nelson said. “But at the end it will help us do better in the conference and state finals.”

In the women’s triple jump, Star Thurman place second at 35-11 1/4, which was an automatic qualification for the Southern California Finals.

“After I heard my jump was an instant qualification for the Southern California finals, I got very happy,” Thurman said.

Even though she qualified for state, Thurman knows she still has work to do.

“This doesn’t mean I’m going to slack off the rest of the season,” Thurman said. “I’m going to try my very best in all the events I compete in.”

In the men’s high jump, both Amir Fisher and Roy Alugbue placed second at 6-6.

Both Fisher and Alugbue earned automatics bids for the Southern California Finals.

The meet opened the season for the Warriors, who had to cancel their first relay meet and practices because of the rain.