By James Sablan
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Variety News Staff
THE road to the 2026 Oceania Athletics Championships in Darwin, Australia has not just been measured in meters and seconds for Team NMI — it has been measured in resilience.
At the helm of this journey is team manager Lia Rangamar. As the team prepares to depart for Australia, Rangamar is overseeing a squad balancing elite performance goals with the sobering reality of a community still recovering from Super Typhoon Sinlaku.
The impact of the typhoon extended far beyond the landscape, directly affecting the team’s preparation. With facilities damaged and infrastructure compromised, the three on-island athletes — Maria Quitugua and siblings Landen and Addalee Taflinger — saw their training schedules disrupted.
“Unfortunately, the three athletes on-island have lost days of training since the storm,” Rangamar said. “They’ve had to adapt to what they could do while waiting for facilities to become available.”
Despite the setback, Rangamar’s confidence in her staff remains unshaken. Pointing to the seasoned coaches within the NMI ranks — veterans who have navigated the aftermath of natural disasters before — she is confident the team will be competition-ready within the short time remaining.
With only two weeks left before the championships begin on May 18, Rangamar’s directive is clear: offset lost training time and sharpen the athletes to face the region’s best.
“Even as training resumes, we’re mindful of the impact the storm has brought, but our athletes are committed to the challenge,” Rangamar said. “The focus for the next two weeks is to make up for that lost training and get them back on track to compete at their best against the best in the region.”
That “best” is a high bar.
The 2026 roster is one of the NMI’s most decorated, featuring:
• Tania Tan, a middle-distance standout who has broken four national records in the past year;
• Maria Maelaine Quitugua, the national record holder in women’s javelin;
• Simon Tang, a hurdles specialist who recently shattered both U20 and Open national records;
• Theodore Rodgers, a U.S.-based sprinter bringing World Championship experience to the 200m;
• and the Taflinger siblings, Landen and Addalee.
While Rangamar acknowledges that “records falling is something we know is within reach,” her primary mission for this trip is rooted in the spirit of the NMI. For her, the Darwin championships are an opportunity for the athletes to serve as ambassadors of the islands’ strength.
“After everything we have been dealing with, we just hope we can represent our people well and make them proud,” Rangamar said. “The goal is always to outperform personal best times and marks.”
James Sablan has been a sports reporter for Variety since 2013. He was a liberal arts student of Northern Marianas College and covers all local sports.
