{"id":378888,"date":"2022-11-02T06:02:36","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T20:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=378888"},"modified":"2022-11-02T06:02:36","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T20:02:36","slug":"great-experience-for-nmi-cross-country-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/great-experience-for-nmi-cross-country-team\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Great experience\u2019 for NMI cross country team"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>
Sildrey Veloria and Denise Myers pose with the CNMI flag during the 2022 Oceania Cross Country Championship in Guam last Saturday. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The cross country team who represented NMI in the 2022 Oceania Cross Country Championship held last Saturday at George Washington High School in Mangilao, Guam said it was a great experience for them.<\/p>\n

The three-person team consisted of runners Denise Myers, Sildrey Veloria and team manager Edward Dela Cruz Jr.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was [a] great experience for the team. It\u2019s not every day you get to compete with Olympians and these guys have now done it twice this year,\u201d said Dela Cruz.<\/p>\n

Myers and Veloria both competed in the seniors 10K race, with Myers winning silver in the women\u2019s division.<\/p>\n

She came in with a time of 43:45.49, right behind gold medalist Awa Ongan of Papua New Guinea who clocked in at 41:55.59; Ayuri Sugahara of Guam took bronze with a time of 50:54.34. Guam\u2019s Lisa Tomada came in fourth with a time of 58:58.86.<\/p>\n

The assistant professor at Northern Marianas College shared that in this race, she reached her time goal of under 44 minutes, \u201cso I was stoked to reach my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, that \u201cit was an honor to run against Ongan from Papua New Guinea\u2026she is a talented runner. I hope with continued training I can give her some better competition the next time we get to compete against one another. I am pleased with how the race went, but want to keep getting better,\u201d said the silver medalist in the 2022 Pacific Mini Games held earlier this year on Saipan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Veloria placed seventh in the men\u2019s division with a time of 42:32.81. Guam\u2019s Ryan Matienzo won gold with a time of 34:41.80, Arthur Toves won silver with a time of 35:08.63, and Derek Mandell won bronze with a time of 35:30.42.<\/p>\n

About the race, Myers said that \u201cthe race was an early start, it was a rainy 6am race start time. The race course was a 2km loop. It was a dual start which included the 10km open Oceania championship alongside with the 6Km Guam high school championships. The dual start was nice because it added more runners to compete against and since the high schoolers were running fewer laps the paces worked out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She then gave thanks and said, \u201cI am thankful to all those who made it possible Northern Mariana Athletics, Oceania Athletics, Run Guam, as well as my friends and family for all of their support.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked how the representatives were chosen, Dela Cruz said, \u201cathletes need to be consistent and committed to even have the chance.\u201d About the duo\u2019s training, he said \u201cit\u2019s offseason right now; they trained on their own to stay active. Sildrey and Denise have not let up on the gas with training.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was wonderful to be selected by NMA to represent the NMI at the Oceania Cross country championship,\u201d Myers added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cross country team who represented NMI in the 2022 Oceania Cross Country Championship held…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":378874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[257],"class_list":["post-378888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-nmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378888","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\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}