Sweet revenge for beach v-ball duo

HONIARA, Solomon Islands—Revenge and redemption is the name of the game in the South Pacific as the NMI’s beach volleyball duo of Logan Mister and Andrew Johnson narrowly defeated their rival Vanuatu in three fight-to-the-death sets Wednesday night at SIFF Academy.

After their win against Vanuatu, they defeated Papua New Guinea in two sets, 21-17, 21-13, in the quarterfinals last night. NMI is playing Australia in the semis today.

Just as the finals match in the 2022 Pacific Mini Games was won by 2 points, it was the NMI boys on the winning side this time as they won, 23-21, 20-22, 15-12 against Vanuatu.

All sets could’ve gone to any team as it was a give and take of points. It was a tied game toward the end of the first set, 16-16, 17-17, then a one-point 19-18 NMI lead. Vanuatu’s duo came bouncing back and deuced it up, but a great save, good blocks, and a short return gave the advantage and first set win to NMI.

In the second set, however, Vanuatu’s Stivano Banga and James Chilia had the upper hand in most plays. Mister and Johnson fought hard but came up short to clinch the sweep as Vanuatu forced a tie-breaking third set.

It was a tie for the first few points in the last set as Vanuatu was always right behind the NMI. Then, Mister and Johnson began to pull away, 10-7, but Banga and Chilia stepped it up a notch and were never too far behind. Finally, NMI kept a 2-point lead and scooped the win at game-point as a sea of blue NMI supporters cheered them on.

Johnson said of the win, “It feels good. We finally got our revenge, but we’re 1-and-1 now so want to play a deciding match.” For Mister, he said, “it feels good too, but I don’t know. I honestly felt like we didn’t play that great… But I think if we play them again, we got ‘em. It’d be nice to get double revenge.”

Tyce Mister, the team’s coach, said that their strategy was to serve the taller Vanuatu guy to make him work harder and to put up a strong block. “Andrew’s defense was on fire, so it was good throughout,” he said.

He added, “I think they were a little bit nervous last night, (Wednesday night) so they played a little less aggressive than how I would’ve liked for them to play, but they did have a 12pm game before that so they were a bit tired.”

NMI was perfect in their pool after they first defeated Palau on Tuesday, then Tonga and Vanuatu on Wednesday.

In soccer, the CNMI Men’s National Football Team lost their last match of the tournament to Tuvalu, 1-4, yesterday afternoon.

Markus Toves slipped the lone goal in the second half, but by then, Tuvalu had already scored all their four goals. It was a deep hole that the NMI team tried to come out of, but time wasn’t on their side, and they settled for the loss.

Head coach Michiteru Mita said of the team’s performance, “Our PG started with unexpected loss and team performance wasn’t good. From there, the boys showed resilience and team performance and players mindset improved. Unfortunately, we lost [our] last game against Tuvalu. This was challenging game; we had many sick players.”

As for the experience throughout, he said, “The team got a great experience. We played four games in three weeks. This experience made [the] team grow and gave great experience for our young players. [The] boys also showed we can compete in Oceania.”

He added, “NMI focus [is] on youth development and we give them many international tournaments opportunities from [a] young age. For sure they grow gradually every after international tournament. Many of them prove that they become stronger and tougher throughout these experiences. We just need to continue [to] support them [and] continue [to] give them opportunities. Then NMI national team [will] continue stronger.”

For athletics last Wednesday, Theodore Rodgers made it to the 200m finals with a time of 23.76 seconds; Alexander Camacho finished the same race at 24.36 seconds. They did not advance to the finals yesterday. As of press time, there were no results for Casey Cruz, Pony Tang, and Maria Igitol’s events yesterday.

Triathlon’s solo athlete, Leo Wania improved upon his overall time from 49:49 to 47:39 in the B finals yesterday morning.

Va’a’s V1 paddlers Tyler Andrew and Janisha Dubrall took on the 16-km long-distance course yesterday morning at DC Park. Andrew finished with a time of 2:17.39, while Dubrall did not finish.