Swimmers take Top 3 spots in Virtual Meet

Saipan Swim Club mainstays Ilia Corella, Ken Kimura, and Jellian Majors swept the Top 3 spots in last month’s Virtual Meet.

Corella was numero uno in the individual points race, amassing 54 points. The 9-year-old topped the 50-meter freestyle, the 50m backstroke, and the 200m individual medley in her age group.

Kimura was also sensational in the pool, totaling 45 points after emerging first in the 200m individual medley of the boys’ 8-and-under category. He also had an 8th place finish in the 50m freestyle.

Majors finished with the same point total as Kimura while competing in the same age group as Corella. She pulled rank in the 100m butterfly of the girls’ 9-and-under age group and did the same in the 100m freestyle. She then came in second to Corella in the 200m IM.

Two other SSC stars made it into the Top 15 list, as R.J. Knecht and Nina Mosley wound up in fourth and sixth places, respectively.

Knecht finished with 40 points competing in the boys’ 9-and-under division. He had no peer in the 100m butterfly event and then came in second in the 200m individual medley. Knecht also logged in a fourth-place finish in the 50m backstroke.

Mosley, for her part, gave a good account of herself with first-place efforts in three events in the girls’ 15-and-under age group. She was tops in the 50m freestyle, the 100m freestyle, and 200m freestyle. She also had a runner-up finish in the 200m breastroke and wound up with 34 points to tie Jacana’s Kirby Bolton and National Aquatic Centre’s Raewyn Simpson.

Other swimmers making it to the Top 15 are International Buccaneers’ Alistair Kershaw (45 points), Ryoya Wakamatsu (39), Remy Mock (36), Kelly Moodie (36), Sascha Hirlinger (36), and Ryutaro Kamiya (36), Barracudas’ Isoa Nagatalevu (36), and Luke Eggins (36) of Nightcliff.

In the team competition, International Buccaneers literally blew the competition out of the water, as they averaged 25.67 points per swimmer. SSC came in second with an 18.83 point norm, while Northern Territory’s Darwin Swim Club came in third with a 15.05

The rest of the participating teams, and their average points per swimmer in parenthesis, are as follows: Fiji’s National Aquatic Centre (14.57), Fiji’s Tritons Swim Club (13.70), Casuarina Swim Club (13.56), Fiji’s Barracudas (13.25), Northern Territory’s Nightcliff Swim Club (10.46), Northern Territory’s Top End Storm (10.11), Fiji’s Mako Sharks (10.04), Northern Territory’s RAAF Darwin Amateur Swimming Club (9.58), Northern Territory’s Jacana (8.97), Northern Territory’s Nhulunbuy Swim Club (8.19), Fiji’s Suva Christian Community (6.64), Northern Territory’s Palmerson and Rural Swim Club (6.18), Marshall Islands’ Kwajelein Swim Club (5.21), Northern Territory’s Katherine (4.67), and Northern Territory’s Tindal Waves (4.17).

Conducted by the Northern Territory Swimming Association in Australia, the Virtual Meet is a swimming competition that has each club holding their meet in their home pool during a designated weekend then transmitting the results to the Northern Territory Swimming Association, who then puts all the results together.

In SSC’s case, the Virtual Meet was held sometime in November at the Kan Pacific Swimming Pool in Marpi.