Sunshine and Bronze Medals

The sun finally decided to make an appearance and keep the rain away—but it also brought with it a wave of heartbreak and upsets for Team Marianas at the 2025 Palau Pacific Mini Games. Still, a medal is a medal, and Monday, July 7, opened the week with bronze finishes for the NMI baseball team and athletics standout Tania Tan.

The defending champs—the NMI baseball team—suffered a tough upset loss against host nation Palau in front of a roaring home crowd, 5-12, on Sunday night at a jam-packed Nippon Baseball Stadium. They returned to the field Monday morning for one last matchup, this time against the Federated States of Micronesia, and bounced back with a convincing 15-5 win to secure the bronze.

Despite the back-to-back grind, the NMI bats weren't silent. Nokki Saralu sparked early momentum against Palau with a first-inning homer to get the team on the board. Then in the bronze match against FSM, Nathan Camacho unleashed two towering home runs, driving in four total runs. Adding to the offensive firepower was Game 1 (against Guam) hero Jerald Cabrera, who launched a longshot of his own to add to NMI's 13 hits.

After their bronze medal match on a hot and sunny Monday morning, team manager Jay Kintol said, “It feels good bringing home some hardware. We wish we were playing in this next game that's coming up but things didn't work out our way during bracket play, but you know, the guys kept their eyes on the prize here—the opportunity to bring some hardware home and that's what we're doing.”

For Camacho, he said of his two homers, “It's super exciting. I'm just happy to play with these guys, I was just trying my best to slow the time down when I'm in the batter's box, trying to be patient, and pick and choose my pitches today.”

With their bronze medal win, he said they made some errors in their games that led up to their bronze medal match. “...against Palau, some crucial errors cost us, but you know, we live and learn for those kinds of things so, we'll bounce back.”

Saipan Baseball League president Jay Santos, who came to watch and support the team said, “I'm really glad I made the trip—I was really happy to come out and support the guys and I guess we had a big tag on our back being defending gold medal champions, but our boys really worked hard.”

He added, “We're super proud of our guys. Glad they get to walk away with what the manager Jay Kintol says, the 'dirty gold'.”

In the afternoon, track stars tore up the Palau National Track and Field as Tania Tan wrapped up their day with a bronze medal in the 5,000m with a time of 18:20.97. Earlier in the games, she bagged the gold in the 10,000m and was a double gold medalist in the 2023 Pacific Games. Gold went to Guam's Jordan Baden at 17:45.37, and silver went to New Caledonia's Natalia Alfonso who clocked in at 18:01.31.

After the event, Tan said, “[I'm] feeling very tired. I feel like it was much different and harder coming in with running the 10,000m right before the 5,000m, whereas in the Pacific Games in Solomons, it was the other way around—so the 5,000m first and then the 10,000m, so definitely felt it but I still tried to give it my all. Fortunately, I came away with a bronze but a medal is still a medal and it adds to our medal tally—which is always good, but yeah, just tried my best and it didn't go my way unfortunately.”

When asked how the competition was this time around, she said she thinks the Guam gold medalist ran in the Pacific Games as well and has improved a lot. “I'm glad it's one of the Micronesians that's taking over, so it's nice that it's still being kept in our region. She just set another record so it's really impressive so it motivates me to keep working harder for next time.”

She has one more race to go—the half marathon in the early morning of Wednesday, July 9.

To wrap up the day, the beach volleyball duo of Logan Mister and Andrew Johnson faced off against a hungry Tahiti team in the semi finals, but managed to win in three sets. They will face off against rival Australia in the finals tonight at 8pm Palau time, 9pm CHST.

The women's fastpitch softball team ended their stint against Guam, in a close 3-4 matchup—with the game ending in an out call at second base as Kiana Aldan tried to steal and get into scoring position at the bottom of the last inning.

Meanwhile, both the men's and women's 3x3 basketball teams won and lost one game each. Today is their final stop.