{"id":296683,"date":"2019-04-02T06:04:18","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T20:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=296683"},"modified":"2019-04-02T06:04:18","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T20:04:18","slug":"sakovich-makes-first-escape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/sakovich-makes-first-escape\/","title":{"rendered":"Sakovich makes first \u2018Escape\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_296684\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-296684\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-296684\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/sscpix.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"1013\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-296684\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Saipan Swim Club co-founder Bill Sakovich heads out of the water to complete last Sunday\u2019s Escape from Managaha. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>CNMI Sports Hall of Famer and Saipan Swim Club co-founder Bill Sakovich joined 40 others in completing last Sunday\u2019s 2019 Escape from Managaha.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was my first time to do the race. The water was a bit choppy on the way to the channel and there\u2019s a strong wind towards the end, but other than that, it was a fun race,\u201d said Sakovich, who missed the early editions of the 2.4-kilometer crossing from Saipan\u2019s famous island to Micro Beach, as he had already moved to Hawaii when the event first started in 2003.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s nice to see old and new faces doing ocean swims or helping out as volunteers,\u201d he added after reuniting with former CNMI swimmers Seung Gin Lee, Colin Thompson, Jacoby Winkfield, and Kristy Springer. Lee, Winkfield, and Springer volunteered as paddlers, guiding the \u201cescapees\u201d during the race.<\/p>\n<p>Winkfield said SSC is honored to have one of its founders (the other one was Bill\u2019s wife, Jeanne) in last weekend\u2019s event. Sakovich, who is in his late 70s, completed the crossing in less than an hour (57:40).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt his age, he remains active in swimming. He continues to inspire us and motivate our swimmers. It was pretty cool to have him around here\u2014this time as a swimmer, not an organizer,\u201d Winkfield said.<\/p>\n<p>Joining Sakovich on the first-timers list were off-island athletes that just completed the 30th Tagaman Triathlon last Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Among them was the Philippines\u2019 Fernando Jose Casares Tan, who timed in at 33:51 to place second behind SSC swimmer Jinnosuke Suzuki (33:34). Jinnosuke\u2019s older brother, Lennosuke, rounded out the Top 3<\/p>\n<p>Other Tagaman finishers who tried out SSC\u2019s open water swim were Kaon Cho (42:13), Jihyuk Yang (42:15), Maria Hodges (42:35), Stephanie Ng (45:41), Nestor Gonzales (48:18), Byung Geun Lee (51:21), and Jae Hong Kim (52:54).<\/p>\n<p>Hodges was the second female finisher behind SSC\u2019s Sophia Gauran and Jinju Thompson, who had similar times of 41:19), while Ng was third.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CNMI Sports Hall of Famer and Saipan Swim Club co-founder Bill Sakovich joined 40 others&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":296684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296683","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=296683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}