By Roselyn B. Monroyo
Variety News Staff

THE Oceania Athletics Association has named the 23 athletes that will represent OAA in the Australian Youth Olympic Festival in Sydney this month.
Athletes from Australia, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauri, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and the Northern Mariana Islands will be competing in the track and field events in the Australian Olympics on Jan. 19 and 20. The biennial meet will run from Jan. 17 to 21.
Sprinter Jacque Wonenberg will be representing the NMI and will join OAA’s 4x400m relay team.
Teaming up with Wonenberg, who was chosen for the multi-sports meet after winning the cross country event in the 2006 Oceania 18-and-under and Open Athletics Championships in Apia, Samoa last month, in the 4x400m relay race event are Tonga’s Penetiti Feke and Fiji’s Salote Niulevu and Milika Tulvanuavou.
One more NMI athlete was supposed to join Wonenberg in Australia, but due to time constraints, the Northern Marianas Athletics decided not to send another athlete.
Last Tuesday, OAA’s Yvonne Mullins informed NMA that they are giving the NMI one more slot. But the selection process for the remaining slot would take time and school will soon start making it necessary for the chosen student-athlete to miss school for about a week.
Actually, NMA will have two representatives in the five-day event, as NMA secretary general Robin Sapong will be part of the Oceania Team Management.
He will be joining Fiji’s Diana Lewis and Kiribati’s Tierata Taukaban.
Completing the OAA delegation are Solomon’s Adison Alfred (100m), Nauru’s Mystique Jones (100m), Tonga’s Paseka Fangupo (110m hurdles), Tonga’s Douglas Bale (1500m), Samoa’s Eka Faitala (1500m), PNG’s Poro Gahekave (2000m steeplecase), Samoa’s Joe Collins So’o (200m), Pora Gahekave (3000m);
Australia’s Jane Marry (4x100m), Kiribati’s Tanroo Taniera (4x100m), Fiji’s Isoe Me (4x400m), New Zealand’s Jacob Croot (discus), Samoa’s Margaret Satupai (discus), New Zealand’s Ayla Gill (hammer), Tonga’s Kalina Mama’o (high jump), Australia’s Luke Hallett and New Zealand’s Morgan Williams (pole vault) and the Cook Island’s Dorothy Kiria.
The Australian Olympics will be held in the same venues at which the 2000 Olympic Games took place.
The tournament will feature 13 to 19-year-old athletes from 23 countries.
Aside from athletics, 15 other Olympic sports will be contested in the multi-sports meet founded in 2001.