A mixture of new and old faces had the men’s cross country team finishing in second place in the season opener at UC San Diego.
Next stop for the Warriors will be L.A. Pierce College for the L.A. Trade Tech Invitational Saturday morning.
The Warriors will compete against conference rival L.A. Trade Tech, who finished first last weekend at the Ventura Invitational.
“It is a smaller invite compared to the one in San Diego. It is a challenging course, but we will give the very best that we can,” coach Dean Lofgren said. “We are going to go out and try to win.”
Last Friday, the Warriors went to UC San Diego to compete in the Southern California Preview meet. The Warriors were successful, finishing in second place.
Having competed in the first meet of the season, the Warriors did not show any fatigue or early jitters. The Warriors knew exactly what to do, especially sophomore Jason Hanakeawe and Tyler Stover.
Hanakeawe finished in sixth place in the four-mile run with a time of 22:08. However, he has higher standards for future meets.
“It was an okay run for the first meet. I know I can do much better,” Hanakeawe said.
Stover also finished in the top 10 in the four-mile run. Stover finished ninth place with a time of 22:18. Stover said he knows they still have some hard work ahead of them.
“It is all about give and take. We are all working hard and we will soon be where we want to be,” Stover said. “We know we have the whole season ahead of us, and we need to improve much more to be the top team in our conference.”
In his first meet as a Warrior, freshmen Dan Villanueva finished in the top 15 in the four-mile run with a time of 22:23.
The Warriors fell short to only one team in the season opener, which was Orange Coast College.
EC finished with combined team points of 73, just 40 more points than Orange Coast College, which had 33 points. Rounding down the top five team was third place Glendale College with 136 points; fourth place was Oxnard with 139 points, and fifth was Cerritos College with 162 points.
“We did a pretty good job of finishing second. We knew we were capable of finishing in the top five,” Lofgren said. “We have a stronger group of men out there.”
