{"id":281377,"date":"2018-08-02T06:04:42","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T22:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=281377"},"modified":"2018-08-02T06:04:42","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T22:04:42","slug":"cnmi-junior-team-nearly-earns-3-peat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/cnmi-junior-team-nearly-earns-3-peat\/","title":{"rendered":"CNMI Junior Team nearly earns 3-peat"},"content":{"rendered":"
The CNMI\u2019s Robbie Schorr, seen here getting ready to serve during a local tournament last April, drew praises from national coach Jeff Race. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As predicted, the CNMI Junior National Team was challenged by a determined Tahiti squad for the Nations Cup in the 2018 Pacific Oceania Junior Championships in Fiji.<\/p>\n

Tahiti went on to beat the CNMI, foiling the Commonwealth\u2019s bid for a three-peat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CNMI finished No. 2 out of the 14 countries represented in the POJC for the Nations Cup standings,\u201d national coach Jeff Race told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n

Race had earlier said that that the two-time Nations Cup winner CNMI would be the target of the oppositions in the POJC, particularly Tahiti, which lost to his wards in close battles in 2016 and 2017.<\/p>\n

The CNMI settled for the runner-up honors this time after getting only one championship\u2014courtesy of Robbie Schorr in the boys U16 singles. Schorr defeated higher-ranked opponents in the semis (No. 2 Clement Mainguy of Vanuatu) and finals (No. 1 Jeremy Guinnes of Tahiti) to rule his division. Tahiti had two titles (boys U14 singles and U16 doubles) and two runner-up wins (girls U14 doubles and boys U16 singles)<\/p>\n

\u201cTahiti beat us by one match out of 65 we played,\u201d said Race, who made special mention of Schorr\u2019s title win in the singles event,<\/p>\n

\u201cRobbie played a remarkable final against defending POJC champion Jeremy Guines of Tahiti to win this year\u2019s title, 6-4, 6-3. I think Jeremy was really stunned by Robbie\u2019s consistency, power and poise under pressure. It\u2019s a great victory for him after eight months of intense competition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Schorr also played in the doubles with Ken Song and they made it to the semifinals. Jimin Woo was the other CNMI player to make it to the finals of a singles event (boys U14), losing to Tahiti\u2019s Manovai Elie. Woo and Seung Jin Paik competed in the doubles finals, too, but bowed to Fiji\u2019s Storm Cornish and the Solomon Islands\u2019 Lachlan Guba.<\/p>\n

In the girls U14 doubles, the CNMI\u2019s Coume Kaga partnered with the Federated States of Micronesia\u2019s Ridianne Wolphagen and they moved into the Final Four. Coume\u2019s older sister, Conatsu, was with Malika Miyawaki and the Commonwealth pair also qualified to the semifinals of the girls U16 doubles. In singles, Conatsu and Miyawaki made it to the quarterfinals and were ranked No. 5 and 6, respectively, at the conclusion of the competition. Coume duplicated her sister\u2019s No. 5 finish in the girls U14 singles.<\/p>\n

In the U12 age group, the CNMI fielded only a boys team (Anthony Gregoire and David Kwon) and it finished sixth in the rankings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As predicted, the CNMI Junior National Team was challenged by a determined Tahiti squad for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":281378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26,2020,18050,1140],"class_list":["post-281377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-cnmi","tag-jeff-race","tag-nations-cup","tag-pojc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281377","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=281377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}