‘NMI paddlers need consistency, commitment’

CNMI men’s canoe (va’a) team coach Dino Manning believes Commonwealth paddlers need to race consistently and give a higher level of commitment to the sport if they wants to someday reach the same level of the perennial medalists in the Pacific region.

CNMI Men’s Paddling Team coach Dino Manning said CNMI paddlers need to practice with the same members for a certain period of time in order to improve its chances in off-island competitions.
(Jon Perez)

“We need to race consistently and the level of commitment to the sport needs to be at a higher level all together,” said Manning, who was part of the CNMI’s eight-member va’a team that competed in this year’s XV Port Moresby Pacific Games in Papua New Guinea.

Manning added that one way to further develop future paddlers is promote other disciplines like the one-man, standup paddle boarding.

“In my opinion, the single best way to increase the level of paddling in the CNMI is to have more people paddling one-man paddle craft. An increase in water time and cross training with other paddlesports such as oneman, v1, standup paddle boarding.”

Manning said the one-man standup paddleboard is a good training tool since it would teach an individual to move the paddleboard through the water more efficiently.

“There is a direct crossover to the six-man canoe and you don’t have to wait for five others to go paddle which allows for an increase in training time. This puts everyone on the same page when you come together to paddle for the six-man canoe,” said Manning.

He added that it was really hard to compete with the region’s traditional powerhouse teams like Tahiti, New Caledonia, Fiji, and the Cook Islands.

“For a team like Tahiti, paddling is their national sport. For other powerhouses such as New Caledonia, Fiji, and Cook Islands, they race at a high level both locally and internationally consistently.”

The CNMI va’a team competed in the 500-meter and 1,500m events, while Ketson “Jack” Kabiriel participated both in the 500m and 15-kilometer long distance single man events.

Though they failed to medal or even reach the finals of the four events they competed in, Manning was satisfied with the team’s performance given the odds that they went up against.

“With the resources that we had, time we trained together, and the level of competition we were going against, we finished about where I expected,” he said.

Team CNMI finished fourth in Heat 2 of the 500m race (2:40.40) and was 0.33 seconds behind Guam’s 2:24.37 in the Repachage with a time of 2:25.10. They also finished fourth in the 1,500m event’s second heat (10:29.92) and was more than 40 seconds behind Fiji’s 9:22.34 in the Repechage after clocking 10:05.26.

It was the same story for Kabiriel after finishing third both in the first heat of the 500m singles (2:54.10) and Repechage (2:56.11). He then placed seventh out of eight paddlers in the 15K long distance race (1:48:42.35).

“While we learned a lot about what we need to do to compete with the world’s best, we have no regrets. Other teams competing had a new crew for each event. We only went with a total of eight team members so we essentially had the same core guys for every event. Also as a crew, our race experience is very limited compared to our competition.”

Manning said that it would be hard to keep the team intact for other off-island tournaments. “Ultimately you would have the same crew members compete over a period of time but this is hard to sustain. Other commitments take over.”

“Also, the members of the Pacific Games crew came from different clubs so the structure would probably be similar in the future where open tryouts are held,” added Manning.

The CNMI is among the 36-member countries under the International Va’a Federation. Va’a competitions in the Port Moresby Pacific Games were held in Lancron Naval Base.

Aside from Manning and Kabriel, other members of the team are Jose Quan, Carter Calma, Jayson Tarkong, Joshua Andrew, Joe Ayuyu Jr., and Ben Olopai.