Riverside City College captured the 2017 Orange Empire Conference men's track and field championship, outdistancing runner-up Orange Coast College by 160 points and the rest of the conference by over 200 points.
The Tigers scored 338 points as they won 10 of the 21 events, including a pair of double winners in Johnathan Essien and Michael Simpson. Essien captured the 100-meters in a time of 10.70 seconds, breaking the tape ahead of Gabe Warner (Orange Coast) at 10.75 and Marquis Rogers (Fullerton) at 10.91. He also added a conference title in the 200-meters with a time of 21.60 seconds to, again, edge past Warner (21.63) with Terrence Chester placing third (22.03).
Simpson posted victories in the 5,000-meters (15:28.69) and 3,000-meter steeplechase (9:58.49). His victory in the 5,000 was just a stride or two ahead of Danny Dominguez (Orange Coast) who clocked in at 15:29.04 with a pair of Santa Ana runners – Paulino Sanchez and Eric Jimeneznava posting times of 15:31.
Other Tigers to capture conference titles included Joshua Silva in the 800-meters (1:58.95) as Riverside finished first through sixth in that event. Alec Hall edged out a pair of teammates to win the 1,500-meters (4:17.48) and the Tiger 4x400 relay team also posted a victory (3:21.90). In the field events, James Wilson captured the triple jump (14.79 meters), Kyle Jenkins claimed the hammer throw (53.83 meters), and Keegan Wiekamp-Huete easily won the javelin (53.59 meters).
Two other student-athletes to win a pair of conference titles were Justin Walker of Fullerton and Alixander Morse of Orange Coast. Walker captured the 110-meter high hurdles (14.71 seconds) as Morse was the runner-up (15.31) and also won the long jump (7.13 meters) ahead of RCC's Wilson (6.85 meters). Morse won the 400-meter hurdles (55.17 seconds), less than ¼ of a second faster than Riverside's Keeon Thomas (55.41). Morse also won the decathlon with 4,932 points.
This was the 11th straight year that Riverside won the OEC men's track and field title.