Taflinger, Santos lead NMI x-country team to podium finish in Guam

The elite 14-member NMI high school cross country team put their best foot forward and closed out the cross country season on a high note with a podium finish at the annual Asia Pacific Invitational Cross Country Championship held last Friday and Saturday in Guam.

Speedsters and this school year’s PSS-NMA All Schools Cross Country champions, Saipan International School Geckos Victor Nash Santos and Addalee Taflinger, capped the relay portion of the event with a bronze medal.

The other relay pairs for team NMI were Takeru Jim and Dianna Zheng who finished 23rd place, and Landen Taflinger and Orica George finished 25th place, for an overall fourth place standing out of 11 teams and 67 pairs in the relay portion of the event.

In the first portion of the event, the individual races, even with no podium finishes by the NMI delegation, Santos and Taflinger still made it to the Top 10 in their divisions. Taflinger finished sixth overall in the girls division with a time of 22:17.50, while Santos secured eighth overall in the boys division with a time of 17:36.30. With their finishes, they were awarded with “All-Island” honors.

After both events, team NMI settled for fifth place overall with a strong overall performance as every boy finished in the top 51 out of 128 runners, and every girl finished in the top 61 out of 94 runners.

With Taflinger, Santos, Jim, Zheng, Landen, and George on the NMI team were Victor Neil Santos, Michael Miller, Ziheng Cai, Yongqi Fan, Jian Chun, Jiahui Chen, Zhaoyu Shen, and Jiamei Hong.

Coach Chad Taflinger said the team did exceptionally well this year. “We had great individual performances which led to a really solid team score of fifth place overall for our Asia Pacific region.” He added, “Thankfully we’ve worked with Dr. Ron [Snyder] quite a bit over the last few years so it was a pretty seamless transition for Angela [Tafligner] and I to take over. Angela had the opportunity to go on the two previous years to API in Guam and Japan and many of our runners had also experienced that as well.”

The main goal, he said, “Is to push each individual student in order to achieve their personal goals. Many times they don’t know what they have in them until we coach them through it.”

The overall competition, the Marianas High School teacher said, was fun and a great way to close out the cross country season, and also a great way to showcase exceptional talent that the CNMI has. “The kids really enjoy meeting other teams and racing against other students that they only get to race against once every year. All of the API coaches look forward to this event and put a lot of time and energy into making it a successful regional event year after year.”

Addalee, one of the team’s top runners and daughter of coaches Chad and Angela, put up her best effort to date, finishing sixth. “She has put in a lot of time and dedication to compete at the level in which she is doing. As for Nash, as a senior, placed eighth overall out of 128 individuals.

Likewise, he also puts in a ton of miles week to week and is really passionate about his running discipline. As a senior, he wanted to go out strong and be able to run with his brother Neil one more time on a big stage,” he said.

The coaches then thanked the CNMI Public School System’s Federal Programs staff for helping out with funding for the team.

The annual event welcomes hundreds of runners from various schools from Guam, Japan, South Korea, Palau, and the CNMI.