Sapong competes in World Indoor track tourney

The CNMI’s Zari Nae Sapong, left, lines up at the starting line of the 100m qualifying heat during the 2015 IAAF World Youth Championship in Cali, Colombia. Today, she will leave for Portland to race in the 60m event in the 16th IAAF World Indoor Championships.
(Contributed Photo)

The CNMI’s Zari Nae Sapong leaves Saipan today to race in the 16th IAAF World Indoor Championships that will be held at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland later this week.

Sapong will be competing in the 60m run and will be joined in Portland by Northern Marianas Athletics official Elias Rangamar. She will run on the qualifying heat of the sprint race on March 20 at 4:40pm Saipan time (11:40 am, March 19 in Portland).

The competition in the U.S. will be the 18-year-old sprinter’s first off-island tournament of the year and Rangamar, who has been supervising her training in the past months, hopes the CNMI bet will set a new national record in the event.

“Zari has put in a lot of hard work in the past four months and I have confidence that she will do real good in Portland. Our goal is to set a personal best time and a CNMI national record. Rachel Abrams holds the record and I’m sure she’s pulling for Zari to break her record,” Rangamar said.

Abrams joined the same event during the 13th IAAF World Indoor Championships in Turkey in 2012 and timed in at 8.31 seconds. She shattered the 8.68 seconds Yvette Bennett posted in the similar event in Doha, Qatar in 2010.

Sapong hit the track and the weight room one last time yesterday before preparing for her departure to Portland. She trained several times in a week to get ready for the World Indoor, having morning and afternoon sessions with Rangamar.

“I start training at 5 in the morning, and/or in the afternoon depending on both my and my coach’s schedule. Training sessions occur six days a week, however, due to the approaching competition dates, I have come to train five days a week,” said the Marianas High School and Northern Marianas College student.

“The reduction allows my body to rejuvenate so that my muscles come to be resilient for the competition. The workouts are altered but the quality of the training is still the same. My workouts consist of weight sessions (Olympic weight lifting, auxiliary lifting, and body weights), running on hills for over speed and resistance training, plyometric training, block work that involved working on my starts, reaction time, and acceleration phases throughout the race. My coach, Elias Rangamar, who puts together my training and makes time in his schedule by also getting up for the early morning sessions, plays a huge role in my training by pushing me to surpass my personal best. Without his persistence, I would not have been able to improve as an athlete,” she added.

Sapong is one of the more than 600 athletes who will see action in running, throwing, and jumping events of the biennial tournament that will return to the U.S. soil for the first time since Indianapolis hosted the inaugural meet in 1987. The competition will run from March 17 to 20.