{"id":403060,"date":"2023-12-04T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=403060"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Beach-v-ball-duo-settles-for-bronze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Beach-v-ball-duo-settles-for-bronze\/","title":{"rendered":"Beach v-ball duo settles for bronze"},"content":{"rendered":"

HONIARA, Solomon Islands\u2014<\/span><\/strong>Logan Mister and Andrew Johnson didn\u2019t get the gold medal they were hoping for in beach volleyball, but bagged the bronze and last medal for Team NMI in the 2023 Pacific Games last Friday night at the SIFF Academy.<\/p>\n

The duo silenced home team Solomon Islands and the crowd after two straight and consistent sets, 21-13, 21-15, to win the 13th and last medal for the NMI. Gold went to Australia and Tuvalu took silver.<\/p>\n

At the end of the Games yesterday, NMI\u2019s medal count stood at 13\u20145 gold, 1 silver, and 7 bronzes.<\/p>\n

The NMI duo had the upper hand throughout the game as Solomons\u2019 Ray Quan and Tam Teriba couldn\u2019t reply to most of Mister\u2019s kills and Johnson\u2019s well-placed returns.<\/p>\n

The first set came and went swiftly as the home team went eight straight unanswered points and tried their hardest to put up a better fight in the second set.<\/p>\n

There was a brief moment in the second set where they were tied in the early points of the game, and Solomons even took the lead, 10-9, but Mister and Johnson used their communication, faster attacks, and longer limbs to their advantage to hold Solomons to just 15 points and secure the bronze medal.<\/p>\n

Mister and Johnson were perfect in pool play after they defeated Palau, Tonga, and rival Vanuatu, but had a tough draw and came up short of a gold medal run after they fell to Australia\u2019s Ben Hood and D\u2019Artagnan Potts in the quarterfinals last Thursday.<\/p>\n

Johnson said of their bronze medal, \u201cWe really wanted to go for gold, but bronze is good. It definitely showed us that we were able to beat a lot of the teams that were in this tournament. We just got to train more, get stronger, and be ready for Australia next time.\u201d<\/p>\n

On their game against Australia, Johnson said, \u201cThey were just playing well. They didn\u2019t make too many errors, while we were not really on our game\u2014we were making errors and it was just kind of a tough day for us.\u201d He added that they thought they were able to beat them because they scrimmaged against them before the tourney started. \u201cThey had weaknesses that we were trying to target but during the actual match, those weaknesses weren\u2019t shown as much as in the scrimmage.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for their game against the Solomons, Johnson said, \u201cWe felt a lot more confident. They\u2019re a really good team, so props to them for making it so far. But we were able to target one of their players and kind of just go after him, play our consistent game, and get the win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mister said he felt pride on winning the last medal for Team NMI. \u201cWe came here late, and some people didn\u2019t even know who we were, but I guess now they kind of do\u2026 we\u2019re just happy to place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old Johnson also said it felt great representing the NMI. \u201cWe felt very proud representing home. We\u2019ll continue doing that moving forward. We\u2019re also hoping to play in FIVB events that aren\u2019t necessarily associated with Pacific Games or Pacific Mini Games, things like Futures Events, maybe some Challenge Events and just try to work our way up the international ladder.\u201d<\/p>\n

NMI beach volleyball head coach Tyce Mister said, \u201cjust very proud of our team and the hard work they put in for this to get here. Looking forward to more tournaments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Team manager Chris Nelson, for his part said, \u201cyes, very proud. I think the goal coming in here was to play that Vanuatu team again. It was the same team and players [from the 2022 Northern Marianas Pacific Mini Games] and to get that result\u2014to be able to play them and win was sort of a medal game right there even if it came a little early in the tournament. So, now the goal is to be beat the continent of Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Logan Mister left last Saturday morning, while Johnson flew on the charter flight back to Saipan with the team.<\/p>\n

Team NMI chef de mission Nick Gross said after the boys\u2019 medal, \u201ccongrats on our final medal of the Games! I\u2019m proud of our team and all our accomplishments.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the va\u2019a crew, they finished their races last Friday with a V12 24km long distance event at DC Park.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s team came in at 2:43.01 and the women\u2019s team time was 2:46.40. They went up against some of the best paddlers in the South Pacific\u2014Tahiti, New Caledonia, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Wallis and Futuna, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Palau, and Guam.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The NMI\u2019s beach volleyball duo Andrew Johnson, left, and Logan Mister with their bronze medals after the awards ceremony last Saturday morning at SIFF Academy.<\/p>\n

-CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
<\/figcaption><\/figure>

<\/p>\n

The NMI\u2019s beach volleyball duo Logan Mister and Andrew Johnson, right, on the podium with gold medalists from Australia, center, and silver medalists from Tuvalu during the awards ceremony of beach volleyball last Saturday morning at SIFF Academy.<\/p>\n

-CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HONIARA, Solomon Islands\u2014Logan Mister and Andrew Johnson didn\u2019t get the gold medal they were hoping…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403060","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=403060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}