A Silver for Penultimate Day of Mini Games

In the penultimate day of the 2025 Palau Pacific Mini Games, Team Marianas picked up its 29th medal—a silver in beach volleyball—after Logan Mister and Andrew Johnson went up against rival and powerhouse Australia, falling in two straight sets, 18-21, 18-21, on a hot and humid Tuesday.

The duo, who took bronze in the 2023 Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands and silver in the 2022 Northern Marianas PMG, were chasing gold and redemption after falling short to Australia in the Solomons. They came out strong, jumping to an early 6-1 lead over Aussies Finley Bennet and Jed Walker.

With leftover NMI teams and their friends and family cheering from the sidelines, Mister and Johnson fought to hold their ground. But the Aussies clawed back to take the first set, 18-21. The Marianas pair pushed hard to force a third set, but came up short again as Australia held on.

Johnson said of their silver medal win, “Silver feels good. We were really going for gold because we lost to Australia in the semifinals in Solomon Islands, but we'll take silver—we're happy with it, we worked hard for this and we played our hearts out. That's all that matters for us.”

Mister added, “We're going to keep grinding, and we're going to get that gold—don't worry, don't worry.”

When asked how the competition was, Johnson said, “The competition overall for the games was really, really good. It was really high level compared to the other games that we played in. Australia was a really good team—they utilized the whole net so they weren't just setting in one spot—they set all over the place, so it was good to play against them, especially for our upcoming tournament in a couple weeks in Taiwan.”

Over in the court, the women's 3x3 basketball team made a historic push for the semis after they won two out of three of their stops—first against the Federated States of Micronesia, then against the Solomon Islands. They lost to Tonga, but were able to play the Solomons for a tie breaker as their points were tied with them. Tonga then beat Samoa, to give NMI the sole holder of second place to advance to the semis today.

The top two teams from each conference are moving on to today's semis. Conference 2 features NMI and Tonga, while Conference 1 includes Fiji and Papua New Guinea. The matchups will be cross-conference, with the winners advancing to the gold medal match and the losers playing for bronze.

After the 6-day tourney, Alliyah Fernandez was named in the All Star 3 team in her conference for her exceptional performance.