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Medal standing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Team Marianas began the second and final week of competitions in the 2023 Pacific Games in style, winning a pair of gold medals and one bronze and recording a dominant victory in football yesterday in Honiara, Solomon Islands.<\/p>\n
Christina Tudela handed the NMI its third gold medal in the 2023 Pacific Games, which resumed competitions Monday after taking a brief break last Sunday. Tudela topped the women\u2019s Model Physique category, getting the judges\u2019 nod in the preliminaries in the morning session and in last night\u2019s finale posing against five other competitors. Davy Laxa, on the other hand, competed in the under 65-kg bodybuilding event and was awarded the bronze medal.<\/p>\n
After the success of the bodybuilding\u2019s pair, Tania Tan capped the fruitful night for Team Marianas with a gold medal in the 5,000m run, besting 18 other runners. Tan, who is based in Hawaii and arrived in Honiara last Saturday to join Team Marianas in its campaign in the 2023 Pacific Games, completed her first race in 18:08.69. The 22-year-old athlete crossed the finish line more than 30 seconds ahead of runner-up Scholastica Herman (18:38.93) of Papua New Guinea. New Caledonia\u2019s Deborah Koboer (19:03.46) joined Tan and Herman in the Top 3.<\/p>\n
NMI surpasses medal haul in 2019 Pacific Games<\/p>\n
With a pair of gold medals and a bronze last Monday, the NMI now has a 4-1-6 gold-silver-bronze medal tally, surpassing its performance in the 2019 Pacific Games in Apia, Samoa where it won 3 golds and 1 silver.<\/p>\n
In football, the NMI Men\u2019s National Football Team got its first victory against an Oceania Football Confederation member-country after shutting down American Samoa, 4-0.<\/p>\n
Jireh Yobech opened up the scoring for the NMI with a penalty kick, while Ruben Guerrero hit back-to-back goals in the second half (46th and 70th minute) before Nolan Ngewakl capped the team\u2019s long-game dominance with a goal in the 90th. Merrick Toves, who flew from the United Kingdom to Honiara to suit up for the NMI, was the goalkeeper for the game and earned his first clean sheet in an international competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to congratulate the NMI football family for today\u2019s victory. For a young and developing football nation like NMI, winning is not everything. It\u2019s also about the football family\u2019s hard work and dedication, and today we are rewarded for all the things we are doing to develop our players and the program. I sincerely would like to thank the NMI football family for always supporting and encouraging us. Their support continues to give us so much energy and power,\u201d NMI Men\u2019s National Team head coach Michiteru Mita said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boys showed great dedication and team work. All 23 players are working hard and the support of the coaching staff are also great. We will continue the hard work and keep our focus to win next game,\u201d Mita added.<\/p>\n
The NMI Men\u2019s National Football Team will play Tuvalu this Thursday at 1pm (Saipan).<\/p>\n
In other results in athletics, runners Casey Cruz, Alexander Camacho, and Theodore Rodgers completed their respective races in the 100m. Rodgers was on Heat 3 of the men\u2019s race and clocked in at 11.52 seconds to finish fifth, one notch behind the fourth semis qualifier in his group. Camacho recorded 11.55 seconds\u2014also for a fifth place finish on Heat 1. In the women\u2019s race, Cruz ran on Heat 4 and logged 13.07 seconds.<\/p>\n
Athletics, football, and va\u2019a races will continue this week, while beach volleyball\u2019s Logan Mister and Andrew Johnson will have their first match today, and triathlete Leo Wania will compete this Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Team Marianas\u2019 participation in this year\u2019s Pacific Games is supported by the Joeten Daidai Foundation, Triple J, Crowne Plaza Resort, IT&E, IP&E, Tan Siu Lin Foundation, Mobil, Tan Holdings, and McDonald\u2019s of Guam & Saipan. (PR)<\/p>\n
Medal standing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Team Marianas began the second and final week of competitions in the 2023 Pacific Games…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-401268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401268","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}