Batallones siblings set swim marks, get NMSA nod

Tsunami Saipan Swimming Center’s Nelson and Maria Batallones earned the Tan Siu Lin Foundation/NMSA Male and Female Student Athletes of the Month (for April) award after registering age group marks during the 2017 Sak SSC Spring Meet held late last month at the Kan Pacific Swimming Pool in Marpi.

Nelson crushed a more than two-decade old record in the boys 13 to 14 age group after timing in at 2:33.66 in the 200m butterfly event. He surpassed the 2:34.65 David Palacios of Saipan Swim Club logged on May 8, 1994 to make it to the CNMI record books for the first time, joining the elite company of Dean Palacios, Kaito Yanai, Kensuke Kimura, and Kai Staal. Nelson posted the fastest time among the swimmers who did the 200m butterfly event last month as his teammate Anthony Camacho-Deleon Guerrero and SSC’s David Boyer logged 2:55.28 and 2:40.90, respectively.

Also getting her first age group mark was the 8-year-old Maria, whose 48.71 seconds in the 50m breaststroke beat the 49.27 seconds her fellow Tsunami Saipan swimmer Nanaka Watanabe made on May 30, 2015.

Maria raced in the 50m butterfly against four other Tsunami Saipan bets and was the lone swimmer to complete the one lap event under one minute as runner-up Nagisa Litulumar checked in at 1:10.84. Sakura Hara, Fiona Regan, and Arwen Bartolata timed in at 1:12.82, 1:20.79, and 1:36.09, respectively.

Meanwhile, three other Tsunami Saipan swimmers also recorded age group marks during last month’s meet named after SSC founders Bill and Jean Sakovich.

In the 9 to 10 division’s 200m backstroke event, Ashley Dangol timed in at 2:44.86, surpassing by nearly five seconds the old record of former Tsunami Saipan swimmer Miku Tammy, who clocked in the 2:49.27 on Jan. 13, 2013. Dangol’s latest mark was her sixth entry in the CNMI record book (in the 9 to 19 division), as she also had similar feats in the 50m and 100m backstroke and 50m, 100m, and 200m butterfly events during the 2017 SSC International Meet held in March.

In the same group, but in the boys category, Isaiah Aleksenko completed the 200m backstroke in 2:50.37 to top the 2:50.95 set by Kaito Yanai of Tsunami Saipan on April 9, 2010. Aleksenko now holds nine of the 15 marks in the boys 9 to 10 age groups with his other records made in the 50m, 100m, and 200m freestyle, 50m, 100m, 200m butterfly, and 50m and 100m backstroke.

In the boys 11 to 12, Juhn Tenorio eclipsed the oldest mark in the age group after clocking in at 31.71 seconds in the 50m butterfly. The Tsunami Saipan swimmer shattered the 31.79 seconds SSC’s Joshua Taitaino tallied on May 6, 1994.