{"id":317622,"date":"2020-02-17T06:06:04","date_gmt":"2020-02-16T20:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=317622"},"modified":"2020-02-17T06:06:04","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T20:06:04","slug":"suzuki-litulumar-top-meek-mighty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/suzuki-litulumar-top-meek-mighty\/","title":{"rendered":"Suzuki, Litulumar top Meek &#038; Mighty"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-317622 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon '>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/suzuki-litulumar-top-meek-mighty\/ssc-pix-litulumar\/'>SSC-pix-(Litulumar)<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<figcaption class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-317623'>\n\t\t\t\tLitulumar\n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon '>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/suzuki-litulumar-top-meek-mighty\/ssc-pix-suzuki-jpg\/'>SSC-pix-(Suzuki).jpg<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<figcaption class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-317624'>\n\t\t\t\tSuzuki\n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>The weather finally cooperated in last Saturday\u2019s 2020 Meek &amp; Mighty Ocean Swim held in the waters off Kanoa Resort in Susupe and that bode well for Jinnosuke Suzuki, Shoko Litulumar, and other winners of the open water swim.<\/p>\n<p>Suzuki and Litulumar, both of Swimming Center Tsunami Saipan, won the men\u2019s and women\u2019s divisions of the 5K race with times of 51:23.06 and 1:00.27.26, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was harder than I thought. The waves were kind of strong. It was a surprise winning the race as the hardest part was swimming against the current,\u201d Suzuki, a 14-year-old Marianas High School student, said during a short interview after the event.<\/p>\n<p>Another Tsunami Saipan swimmer, Isaiah Aleksenko, finished second to Suzuki with his 53:29.76, followed by Nelson Jay A. Batallones with his 59:11.96.<\/p>\n<p>Like Suzuki, Litulumar wasn\u2019t expecting to win the longest race of the Meek &amp; Mighty Ocean Swim.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was expecting second but not first. The hardest part was going against the waves while swimming on to the second buoy. I was concerned about my sister because I was trying to beat her,\u201d she said alluding to Asaka, who came in second in the division with a time of 1:00.29.18. Jinie Thompson of Saipan Swim Club finished third with her time of 1:01.56.52.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was concerned about Asaka and also about Jinie because I wanted to beat them so I can get at least a place,\u201d said the 13-year-old Litulumar, who goes to Hopwood Middle School.<\/p>\n<p>Big things coming in small packages was the theme in the intermediate 3K swim, as Kouki Watanabe and Maria Corazon Batallones reigned supreme with times of 33:07.09 and 37:14.59, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>MHS teacher and former SSC coach Jacoby Winkfield came in second in the men\u2019s division with a time of 40:46.41, while Andrew Nunez came in the third with his 43:07.12.<\/p>\n<p>In the women\u2019s, Saipan Community School teacher and SSC assistant coach Sarah Vander Wal came in second with her time of 42:42.21 with Savita Sikkel finishing third with a 42:51.13.<\/p>\n<p>In Meek division, Justin Ma topped the 1K race for men with his time of 14:59.36 followed by Arman Rechucher (15:54.31) and Tristan Raho (15:59.64).<\/p>\n<p>In the women\u2019s race, Sari Barman was the first out of the water with his 15:05.29. Nagisa Litulumar (15:91.21) and Jessica Ma (15:54.07) followed.<\/p>\n<p>In the short 50m race from the beach to the first buoy, Kanoa Owens (1:10.31) topped the boys with Mechael Rechucher (1:25.43) and Teagan Wright (1:23.00) next. In the girls, Maria Guerrero (1:11.17), Shana Barman (1:12.05), and Stella Choi (1:16.13) finished 1-2-3.<\/p>\n<p>Introduced by former SSC coach Michael Stewart about 14 years ago, the Meek &amp; Mighty Ocean Swim refers to the 5K swim as the \u201cMight\u201d and the 1K swim as the \u201cMeek.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rough waters preceded days before the race that made SSC coach Richard Sikkel check out the event site a couple times for safety reasons.<\/p>\n<p>For more information on the Meek &amp; Mighty Ocean Swim or the SSC, email saipanswimclub@gmail.com or message them on their Facebook page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The weather finally cooperated in last Saturday\u2019s 2020 Meek &amp; Mighty Ocean Swim held in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":317625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317622","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\/317622","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}