{"id":30302,"date":"2014-03-20T17:04:31","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T09:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tribune.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=30302"},"modified":"2014-03-20T17:04:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T09:04:31","slug":"quinn-gets-nmasa-athlete-year-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/quinn-gets-nmasa-athlete-year-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Quinn gets NMASA Athlete of the Year award"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Russ<\/a>
Russ Quinn, fourth from left, poses with his NMASA Male Athlete of the Year plum and NMICF board members, from left, Alex Gozon and Esther Ada, president Vince Seman, and board member John Jones during the brief turnover ceremony yesterday at 360 Restaurant. (ROSELYN B. MONROYO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Northern Mariana Islands Cycling Federation presented to Russ Quinn the NMASA Male Athlete of the Year trophy he won during Northern Marianas Amateur Sports Association\u2019s 2013 Annual Awards Banquet in a brief ceremony yesterday at 360 Restaurant.<\/span>
\nPresent to hand Quinn the coveted award were NMICF president Vince Seman and board members John Jones, Esther Ada, and Alex Gozon. Quinn missed NMASA\u2019s recognition day late last month at the Seaside Hall of Kanoa Resort because he was off-island.<\/p>\n

Quinn earned NMASA\u2019s nod after a successful comeback in cycling scene. He joined the 2013 Hell of Marianas and completed the 100-kilometer race in less than four hours. He did the feat less than a year after undergoing a hip replacement surgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did Hell of Marianas about seven months after the surgery. I wanted to go back to racing because it\u2019s my wife (Kanae) who was organizing the Hell, so finishing the race and winning this award just made my return sweeter,\u201d Quinn said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am deeply honored with this award, especially at this time of my life when I am racing against promising and younger bikers,\u201d the 49-year-old athlete said. \u201cI would like to thank NMASA and its members for this recognition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones, who attended the NMASA rites and received the plum on behalf of Quinn, also thanked the group for honoring the latter and three more NMICF members (student athletes of the month Erico Castro and Gerald Rangamar and athlete of the month Nap Dizon).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are kind of new member of NMASA, but the organization gave us a warm welcome and respects us as shown in the members and officials\u2019 votes to Russ and our three other athletes of the month awardees,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Seman said NMASA\u2019s recognition of Quinn\u2019s achievement reflects NMICF\u2019s commitment to produce competitive bikers and be active yearlong.<\/p>\n

\u201cNMICF is very committed to promoting cycling in the CNMI. So far we have about 150 members and the number could grow as we continue to see new bikers on the road,\u201d said Seman, who added they have lined up a lot of competitions leading up to the group\u2019s biggest event for the year\u2014the Hell of Marianas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have bikers who are joining XTERRA and Tagaman and we are supporting events from other bikers\u2019 group,\u201d Seman said.<\/p>\n

The NMICF president also said they are planning to reach out to schools to attract younger members.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last MISO triathlon, we gave free Hell entries to the top male and female finishers of the race. Hopefully in the near future, we can work on a cycling race for high school students or even those in junior high. One of our main goals is to recruit more youth bikers because that\u2019s one of the best ways to ensure the steady growth of the sport. We wanted to have a sort of a \u2018farm league\u2019 of youth bikers,\u201d Seman said.<\/p>\n

The federation has started talking to Kagman High School to push its program for youth bikers, according to Ada.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been communicating with Kagman High School, which got 30 bikes through a federal grant. They want us to help them run a race for their students,\u201d Ada said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Northern Mariana Islands Cycling Federation presented to Russ Quinn the NMASA Male Athlete of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":30322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[46,569,670,407],"class_list":["post-30302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-ceremony","tag-nmasa","tag-nmicf","tag-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30302","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=30302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}