Yousef Cherqaoui ran in 44th place and teammate Luca Augustyn scored right behind him in 45th in helping the Pasadena City College men's cross country team to a fifth place team finish at the South Coast Conference Championships held Friday at Harbor City's Ken Malloy Regional Park.
Cherqaoui, a sophomore, ran the 4-mile course in a time of 23 minutes, 56.4 seconds while the freshman Augustyn crossed the line in 24:06.5. Cherqaoui improved his placing slightly from the 2022 race when he finished in 38th.
Eighteen racers from 10-time defending conference champion Mt. San Antonio placed higher than the Lancers, Long Beach City, LA Harbor, East Los Angeles and Compton's top runners in the 99-participant field. The Mounties with 12 All-SCC racers (top 14 earn awards) basically have a monopoly on most of the top runners in the conference.
Also scoring for PCC were Christopher Camarena in 52nd (24:25.3), Umar Saleem in 60th (24:47.1), and Winsor Harmon in 65th (25:24).
Other Lancers finishers were Samuel Platz (66th, 25:24.5), Sergio De Los Santos Jr. (77th, 26:11.4), Colt Reichman (79th, 26:23.8), Jaime Loera (81st, 27:02), and Aghasi Melkonyan (85th, 27:54.4).
Directed by head coach Innocent Egbunike, Pasadena qualifies as a team and will race at the Southern Califonia Championships next Friday, Nov. 3 at Long Beach's El Dorado East Regional Park.
