{"id":254441,"date":"2017-06-15T06:04:58","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T20:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=254441"},"modified":"2017-06-15T06:04:58","modified_gmt":"2017-06-14T20:04:58","slug":"song-ren-give-cnmi-top-2-finish-elims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/song-ren-give-cnmi-top-2-finish-elims\/","title":{"rendered":"Song, Ren give CNMI Top 2 finish in elims"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_254446\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-254446\" style=\"width: 181px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/NPQ-pix-3-181x300.jpg\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-254446\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ken Song makes a baseline return to Vincent Tudela during their game in the 2017 White Coconut Tennis Classic at the Pacific Islands Club hard courts. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Ken Song and Michael Ren kept their undefeated record in the 16-and-under singles event of the 2017 North Pacific Regional Championships after Day 3 of the competition in Guam.Song and Ren finished with similar 4-0 records after last Tuesday\u2019s pool play matches and assured the CNMI a 1-2 ranking in Group B going into the quarterfinal round.  Ren completed his Day 3 sweep after beating Guam\u2019s Marshall Zhang, 7-5, 6-3, at the Tamuning court, while in an earlier duel against Guam\u2019s James Hourican, the Commonwealth labored a 7-6 (3) win in the first set before taking an easier 6-2 triumph in the second. Song, who also downed Hourican in the morning match at the Rick Ninete Tennis Center in Hagatna, matched Ren\u2019s perfect mark following a 6-0, 6-0 demolition of the Federated State of Micronesia\u2019s Andy Sipps.<\/p>\n<p>In other results, Maria Gregoire is still on top of the standings in girls 14-and-under singles after improving her record to 3-0. She got her third win in as many games last Tuesday against FSM\u2019s Paris Panuelo, 6-2, 6-1, to share the top spot with the latter\u2019s compatriot Anne Skilling. <\/p>\n<p>The girls 14-and-under singles has a round-robin format and the first finisher in the six-player field will be awarded the title. Gregoire will try to boost her championship bid in the division when she duels Guam\u2019s Kaia Malakooti today, while the latter\u2019s final game will be this Friday against Skilling.<\/p>\n<p>The girls 16-and-under singles also has a round-robin format with the CNMI\u2019s Malika Miyawaki and Grace Choi in a three-way deadlock for the top spot with Guam\u2019s Anika Sachdev after Day 3. The three players are 2-0, pending results of yesterday\u2019s matches, which include the battle between Miyawaki and Choi.<\/p>\n<p>In the boys 14-and-under singles, the CNMI\u2019s Sean Lee is one win away from sweeping pool play after dominating FSM\u2019s Nolan Namuhn, 6-1, 6-0. The No. 1 seed in the division bagged his third victory in as many games and was scheduled to meet fellow Commonwealth player Richard Steele (2-1) in his final preliminary match in Group A. Both Lee and Steele are assured of the quarterfinals slots in the event regardless of the results of their game yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, in the U12 team event, the CNMI Boys 1 improved to a 2-0 record after sweeping the CNMI Boys 2, 3-0. Daniel Kang and Anthony Gregoire prevailed against Kiwoong Kwon, 6-4, 6-1, and Andrew Chung, 6-0, 6-1, in their respective singles matches and also took the doubles game, 6-4, 6-4.<\/p>\n<p>In the girls division, the CNMI Girls 1 debuted with a close win over North Pacific Girls, 2-1. Hyejin Elliot and J.C. Ferrer won the deciding doubles match versus FSM\u2019s Leilah Etscheit and Guam\u2019s Monte Gibson, 4-6, 6-3, 10-8. Elliot also downed Gibson in the singles 1 game, 6-1, 6-0, while Etscheit topped Ferrer in the other singles play, 6-3, 6-1. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Song and Michael Ren kept their undefeated record in the 16-and-under singles event of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":254446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26,478,51,17219],"class_list":["post-254441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-cnmi","tag-fsm","tag-guam","tag-marshall-zhang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254441","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\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}