Story and photo by Jesse Muñoz/COC Sports Information Director

College of the Canyons track & field will see six student-athletes transfer and compete at the four-year level.

Included in the group of recent signees are Leo Lambert III, Slade Cavallaro and Marcel Sylvester for the men’s team, and Díani Ellis, Stephanie Martinez and Sophia Stephan, for the women’s squad.

Lambert and Cavallaro will both head to UC Riverside after successful sophomore campaigns which saw both athletes win conference titles and earn All-American honors.

Lambert was the Western State Conference champion in the 400m and also helped COC’s 4x100m relay team earn a WSC title. That team, which also included Cavallaro, sophomore Blake Beeler and freshman Calel Christian, went on to place fourth at the CCCAA State Championship meet and earn JC All-American honors.

Likewise, for the 4x400m relay team, which included Lambert, Cavallaro, Beeler and freshman Steven Arrington. That combination clocked a school-record time of 3:13.62 at the state championship meet to place fourth and claim JC All-American honors.

Cavallaro also won a WSC title in the 400h, in addition to his work on the men’s relay teams.

Marcel Sylvester is heading to California State University Fullerton after an All-American sophomore season. Sylvester earned JC All-American status by placing third in the high jump at the state championship meet. That performance came on the heels of his third-place jumps at both the WSC Championships and CCCAA SoCal Championships.

Ellis and Martinez will next be competing as Gators after both signed National Letters of Intent with San Francisco State University last fall.

In 2017, Ellis won an individual state championship and took home JC All-American honors in the 3K steeplechase with a time of 11:15.61. In doing so, she became just the second individual state champion in COC women’s track & field history. Ellis did not compete for the Cougars in 2018 after previously using her two seasons of eligibility at the community college level.

Martinez capped her sophomore season by placing seventh in the 10,000m at a time of 40:42.38 and ninth in the 5,000m at 19:34.41, during the state championship meet.

Stephan also competed at the state championships, taking eighth in the 1,500m at a time of 4:55.18. She will now head to University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Ellis, Martinez and Stephan also competed as two-year members of the COC cross country program. In 2017, the trio helped Canyons to a second place finish in the Western State Conference (WSC) before placing sixth in Southern California and eighth at the state championship meet. Ellis finished fifth overall at the state event with a school record time of 18:32.1.