Athletes from all over California descended upon La Playa Stadium for the 70th annual Easter relays on Friday.

The invitational consisted of 14 community colleges and a number of unattached participants.

Javelin was the first event of the day, beginning at 9 a.m. at Pershing Park. The City College participants in the event were Mark Evans, Kyle Peete, Stephanie Potter and Rebecca Pies.

Javelin throwing was banned from high school track and field. As a result, many throwers try it for the first time in college.

“How many times do you get to throw a spear as hard and as far as you want?” asked Peete, a first-year student at City College.
The Vaqueros performed admirably on the track, posting some of their best times of the season.

In his first race of the year, City College’s Graydon Manning won the 1,500-meter dash with a time of 4 minutes, 7.21 seconds. Paige Coljin took the 5,000-meter with a time of 19:19.98.
“We’re four weeks out from conference championships,” Head Coach Scott Fickerson said, “This is kind of the last meet before we start fine tuning.”

Other standouts in the meet were Carina Celio, who placed second in the triple jump at (33-6 ½) and Jonathan Worthge who placed second in the long jump at (21-2).

Fickerson also praised Jeff Rosecran for running three 400-meter events on the day in his fastest times of the season. Fickerson also said he was impressed by Mark Evans, who threw 150 feet in the javelin.

City College will host a Western State Conference mini-meet at 2 p.m. Friday at La Playa Stadium.