Coach Hiro shares secrets of swim team’s success

Hiroyuki Kimura was able to check off one from his bucket list after guiding the CNMI National Swimming Team’s gold medal rush in the 2024 Micronesian Games in Kwajalein, Republic of Marshall Islands.

“The Micro Games has been one of the important targets of my coaching career. As a member of Team Marianas, I don’t want to lose. This is because it’s a competition that makes me wish strongly, ‘Let NMI take the top spot in the medal tally!” To make it, we have to win all the gold medals in swimming and contribute to Team Marianas. With this in mind, I have been training our swimmers for half a year after the Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands,” the CNMI national swimming coach recently told Saipan Tribune.

Kimura said he never doubted the outcome as he had 100% confidence on the CNMI national swimming team coming into the 10th edition of the Micro Games.

“This was the first time in the history of Micro Games swimming competitions that one country won 49 gold medals. This was an amazing historic achievement. hHowever, it was a result that was meant to be achieved.”

He then explained how organizers putting a premium on swimming events during the quadrennial event aided in Team CNMI’s historic performance in the Kwajalein Pool.

“There were 20 individual swimming events, including open water races, for each gender. There were five relay events for each gender and we had also a mixed relay, in which two men and two women teamed up. Mixed relay had five events. There were 55 events in total and we won 49 of them.”

He continued, “athletics and swimming are the sports which have a large number of events, not only all events for each gender, but there is also a wide variety of distances and competition characteristics. Mass production of medals in these two sports contributed to the NMI’s medal tally.”

Kimura said all CNMI national swimmers—Maria Batallones, Frances Raho, Justin Ma, Isaiah Aleksenko, Kean Pajarillaga, Kouki Watanabe, Richard Zhao, Shoko Litulumar, Sari Barman, Maria Guerrero, Nagi Tenorio, and Michael Miller—played important roles in the swimming team accumulating a total of 78 medals (49 gold medals, 15 silver, and 14 bronze) in this past Micro Games.

“The NMI’s top swimmers, such as Isaiah, Kean, Kouki, Maria, Frances, and Shoko were expected to win gold medals in individual events, but even if only these swimmers performed well, we wouldn’t have achieved our goal to win as many medals as we wanted. It’s because it will be no good if we don’t win in the relays. Winning in the relays gives the team momentum. Relays involve four swimmers. No matter how fast the three swimmers are, if one swimmer is slow, there is a high risk of missing out on the gold medal in the relay. Therefore, it was absolutely necessary to develop a fourth swimmer.”

Kimura said this was especially true in the women’s relay events in the 2024 Micro Games as the eventual times of all participating relay teams ended up so close to one another.

“That’s why we were very serious and careful in selecting the four women’s swimmers. We held a selection time trial before the relay events to decide on the final members. In fact, the NMI women’s team would have lost several gold medals if we didn’t choose the right swimmers. We verified each result before any relay and decided on the swimmers each time. That’s the hard work of our whole staff members. I was in charge of race predictions and analysis, coach David [Roberto Jr.] was in charge of instructing and checking the relay transition practice, and [team manager] Yuko [Kimura] was in charge of video shooting and time compilation. These eventually all bore fruit, leading to the remarkable achievement of winning all relay races, both male and female, and contributing greatly to the NMI’s overall medal tally,” he said.

That’s why in the end, Kimura’s blood boiled when he learned that Nauru came in a close second place in the final medal tally as it got its medal rush from weightlifting and the CNMI only won the medal tally by two gold medals.

“I was relieved that our selection of relay members was right.’

Aside from exhibiting the ultimate sign of teamwork by winning all the relay events, Kimura said another key for Team NMI was their performance on Day 1 of the swimming events and how this propelled them to dominate swimming in the Micro Games.

“The NMI team gained momentum by winning relay races one after another, but there was another secret strategy to generate momentum. That was conquering all the events on the Day 1. Day 1 was also the day the swimming opening ceremony was held, so there were only four events, but how much momentum did conquering the first day bring to the NMI? Did it leave a big impact on other countries? That can’t be measured. Therefore, we concentrated all our efforts on Day 1.”

While he’s sure there were many other factors in Team NMI’s remarkable gold rush in the Micronesian Games, there’s no doubt that developing a group of athletes who could win in relays led to this great achievement and hopefully would serve them in good stead for future swimming events.

“Next year’s Pacific Mini Games in Palau will be a tough one for the NMI swim team as we will have to face the loss of Isaiah, Kean, and Taiyo [Akimaru], who are our main swimmers. It won’t go like the 2023 Pacific Games. However, there is still one year left, so we will do our best to achieve good results in Palau, too!”

Last but not the least, Kimura said CNMI swimming’s success in the 2024 Micronesian wouldn’t have been possible without the help from all the sponsors of Team Marianas, Northern Marianas Sports Association, Northern Mariana Islands Swimming Federation, Aqua Resort Club, Pacific Islands Club Saipan, and the Tan family.