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Tsunami Saipan starts 2008 season
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Posted on Aug 13 2008
Tsunami Swimming Center Saipan started its 2008-2009 season last Aug. 4 with the year-old club dividing its swimmers into three groups—Sensyu, Jyun-Sensyu, and Ikusei.
Head coach Hiro Kimura has high hopes for the club’s senior swimmers in the Sensyu course, which is Japanese for real athlete.
“Our target for the senior age swimmers of the Sensyu course is for them to participate in big international competitions representing the CNMI. This season we are looking at taking part in three big meets—Jr. Pan Pacific Championship, Arafura Games, and FINA World Championships,” he said in an email to the Saipan Tribune.
Kimura said swimmers that are part of Tsunami Saipan’s Sensyu course are Rezne Wong, Cooper Graf, Shin Kimura, Marystar Welch, and Kensuke Kimura.
“One of our major goals this year for our senior swimmers is for them to break CNMI records as much as they can. A lot of records have not been broken for a long time now,” he said.
Just a notch below the senior swimmers are Tsunami Saipan’s Jyun-Sensyu, which is a direct Japanese translation to junior top swimmers.
Kimura said, at present, members of the Jyun-Sensyu course are Thea Minor, Kaisei Toda, Ashley and Salofi Welch, and Kaito Yanai.
“The aim of this team is to improve and move up to the top team as soon as possible.”
After Jyun-Sensyu swimmers are Tsunami Saipan’s youngest group, which is called the Ikusei course.
Kimura said Ikusei means developing in Japanese and currently 14 of his swimmers belong to this course.
“Many of our kids are still off-island for summer vacation. If everyone comes back, it will increase our numbers,” he said.
Kimura also added that for the 2008-2009 season, Tsunami Saipan has started a beginners class for swimmers eight years old and younger.
“Tsunami Saipan intends to usher the growth of the islands’ new generation of swimmers. We want to make a strong relay team for every age group and each gender. At first, we aim to break CNMI record of the 8-under age group. These are long-standing records that nobody has broken the past 30 years,” he said.
For more information about Tsunami Saipan and its courses, call the club’s team manager Yuko Kimura at 789-7842.
