Torchbearers take home 3 gold, 2 silver in cross country

The Agape Christian School boys and girls middle school cross country teams pose for a photo after the 2022-2023 All School Cross Country Championships at the Saipan Vegas Country Club last Saturday. The ACS middle school boys team won gold overall and Raffy Cai won bronze in the middle school boys division individual standings. The ACS middle school girls team won gold overall as well and Barbara Wang won silver in the middle school girls individual standings. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS)

The Agape Christian School Torchbearers bore their torch through the rain and terrain over the course of a month and came out of it with three gold medals, topping the competition in the boys high school division and both middle school divisions, and two silver medals for the elementary boys division and high school girls division, in the 2022-2023 NMA-PSS All Schools Cross Country championship last Saturday at the Saipan Vegas Country Club.

The ACS middle school girls came in gold with 20 points, followed by Saipan International School with silver for a close 23 points, and bronze for Saipan Community School with 41 points.

Then, the middle school boys Torchbearers zoomed into first place as well for their second gold medal, with a huge lead of 18 points, followed by Dandan Middle School with 49 points, and Hopwood Middle School with 68 points. 

The Agape Christian School boys and girls high school cross country teams pose for a photo after the 2022-2023 All School Cross Country Championships at the Saipan Vegas Country Club last Saturday. The ACS high school boys team won gold overall and Samuel Zhu, middle, won gold in the high school boys division individual standings. The ACS high school girls team won silver overall. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS)

For their third gold of the championships, ACS plowed through the finish line in the high school boys division with 17 points, followed by Marianas High School with 29 points, and Mount Carmel School with 70 points.

For the elementary school boys division, the ACS youngsters came in second place for silver with 44 points, right behind SIS with 25 points.

In the high school girls division, ACS came in second place as well with 25 points for their second silver of the championship, right behind SIS with 14 points.

For the high school boys individual results, ACS’ Samuel Zhu received gold medal for his time of 19:55, followed by Pony Tang of MHS with a time of 20:08, and Cody Shimizu from MHS as well with a time of 20:29.

In the middle school boys individual results, Michael Miller of Grace Christian Academy came in gold with a time of 9:42, followed by Landen Tafflinger of Dandan Middle School with a time of 10:05, and bronze went to Raffy Cai from ACS with a time of 10:15.

In the middle school girls individual results, Adalee Tafflinger of DMS won gold with a time of 11:04, followed by Barbara Wang of ACS for silver with a time of 11:46, and Sari Barman from Tanapag Middle School with a time of 12:05.

In the U12 boys individual results, Quido Jambor from SIS reached for gold with a time of 11:15, Reyviel Escarion from ACS won silver with a time of 11:39, and Kanoa Owens from Garapan Elementary School won bronze with a time of 11:53.

ACS administrator and pastor Kok H. Pang exclaimed, “What an age group Cross Country races under a big shower of blessings! This is by far one of the best cross country I ever witnessed.” 

“First of all, our HS boys and both MS boys and girls did extremely well to claim golds in the team events as champions. Samuel Zhu did us proud to win the U18 in his first try and in style too. Secondly, our HS U18 girls did themselves proud to give SIS a good challenge. Congratulations to SIS girls to win the team gold,” he said.

Additionally, he said, “I am very proud to have both our middle school boys and girls clean-sweeping the MS team titles. There are less than 10 MS boys and girls students respectively in ACS and it made the results more pleasing to us. For a small school like us to achieve a big performance is a testament to God’s blessings and definitely very good for their overall education. Furthermore, ACS surprisingly won second in the ES Boys team division. There are a total of only 10 boys In the Elementary School of ACS and the six boys who ran achieved great results for us. Reyviel van Escarlan won silver for U12 boys and Nehemiah Li got 6th. I am also very proud of Cloud Tian who placed 16th in the boys’ division when he is only 7 years old.”

“Finally, I would like to send a big thank you to the meet director, Dr. Ron Synder, Mr. Robin Sapong, Mr. Nick Gross, and everyone in NMA/PSS who worked tirelessly to make this 2022 Cross Country competition such a great success!” Pang added.

The Northern Marianas Athletics coordinated the event along with the Public School System Athletic Program.

The championship results of the elementary school division and high school girls division will come out in the next edition of Saipan Tribune.