{"id":202694,"date":"2015-05-28T13:39:22","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T03:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=202694"},"modified":"2015-05-28T13:39:22","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T03:39:22","slug":"learning-experience-for-miller-sapong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/learning-experience-for-miller-sapong\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning experience for Miller, Sapong"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2015 Oceania Athletics Association Area Championship served as a learning experience for youngsters Evan Miller and Zarinae Sapong.<\/p>\n

\"Zarinae<\/a>
Zarinae Sapong competes in the 4×100 meter relay in last Saturday\u2019s Public School System\/McDonald\u2019s All-School Championship at the Hopwood Junior High School field. (Jon Perez)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Miller and Sapong were part of a six-member Team CNMI, which was coached by Ron Olopai that competed in the area championship held early this month at Barlow Park in Cairns, Australia.<\/p>\n

Rachel Dominique Abrams, Beouch Ogumoro Ngirchongor, Gerald Castillo, and Donavin Ada, who won bronze in boys javelin throw, were the other Team CNMI members.<\/p>\n

Miller said that he would now take practice more seriously since he could have done better if he gave more time in training.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could say that I performed better in the 200m race compared in the 100m. It\u2019s still something that I need to work on,\u201d said Miller, who posted personal best times of 12.73 seconds (16th) and 25.74 seconds (17th) in the 100m and 200m sprints, respectively.<\/p>\n

Though his opponents in Cairns overwhelmed him, Miller is optimistic with his budding athletics career.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose competing in Oceania are all huge and fast. I was shocked but I think I\u2019ll match up to them the next time,\u201d said Miller, who was into basketball before being recruited by coaches Elias Rangamar and Robin Sapong to athletics.<\/p>\n

He said that he would also stick with track and field since it has greatly improved his running ability in basketball.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I’ll be sticking to both sports ’cause track really improved me in my finish to the rim. I can outrun my defender and beat him to the basket,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I have to work on my cycling when I run. My stamina and probably my shotput throw too. In everything else, I think I\u2019m good to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sapong, who was part of the 4 x 100m relay silver-medal winning Team CNMI in last year\u2019s Pohnpei Micronesian Games, competed in her second Oceania championship after seeing action when the Cook Islands hosted the event last year in Rarotonga.<\/p>\n

Abrams, Friendly Joy Pena, and Lia\u2019mwar Rangamar were the other members of that 4x100m relay team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe competition level in the Area championship is much higher compared to that of the Micronesian Games. There were more athletes from a wider variety of places,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Personally, Sapong said that she was not satisfied with her performance. \u201cI believe I could have done better. One of the things that I could improve on would be my take off on the starting blocks and my reaction time.\u201d<\/p>\n

She finished 13th in the girls 100m and 200m runs with times of 13.91 and 28.97 seconds, respectively.<\/p>\n

Meeting other veteran athletes in the Oceania region also gave her the chance to learn new things that would help her with her training.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned more about the other athletes in the Oceania Area and the type of workouts they incorporated into their training.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2015 Oceania Athletics Association Area Championship served as a learning experience for youngsters Evan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":202711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[310,4871,4872,4506],"class_list":["post-202694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-basketball","tag-pohnpei-micronesian-games","tag-rachel-dominique-abrams","tag-zarinae-sapong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}