Paralympians win 13 medals in Darwin

The 2011 Arafura Games incorporating the Paralympic Oceania Championships has two days and the PNG Paralympic team has excelled bagging 13 medals ending their last day of competition on Wednesday at the Marrara Athletics Stadium.
The Arafura medals include two gold medals, two silver and two bronze medals while Oceania Paralympic Championships medals include two gold, three silver and two bronze.
Grabbing Para sport’s second gold medal was Regina Edward, class F44, who threw a distance of 25.68m setting her new personal best on Wednesday in the women’s javelin ambulant.
In the men’s 200m ambulant, Peter Kelusa, finished second in 24.43s.
Kelusa has consistently been improving his times, setting new PBs on every heat, while Elias Larry finished in fourth place with 26.72s also setting a new PB.
Youngest of the Paralympic team member, Elias Pagur, a 15-year-old below knee amputee, who won a silver medal in the men’s high jump ambulant.
Elias jumped 1.20m to settle for the silver.
In the last event for PNG was the women’s 200m ambulant, which saw Joyleen Jeffrey T12 (vision impaired) finish in second place in a time of 30.29s.
Jeffrey was however disqualified for a technical error and missed out on the silver. 
Powerlifting received a bronze from Timothy Harabe  with the first gold medal won by Thompson Ninkama a T20 in the men’s 5000m ambulant while Athletic contributed majority of the para sport medals.
Meanwhile in cricket, the Hebou Hammers made the semi-finals with only two wins when they rallied and hammered the Australian Defence Forces in the bronze medal game.
Coach Rarua Dikana was elated with the result and stated that “the most pleasing thing is that the four players who were picked out of local cricket for the first time in international cricket have been outstanding”.
“Anthony Manega,21, and Henoa Geita, 18, have displayed enormous potential and have shown some more credentialled Hebou Barramundi players up,” Dikana said.
 “Yeserday’s bronze medal game was an opportunity for the team to redeem itself as we flew in with expectations of gold but were perhaps distracted by last week’s last minute saga with Team NCD leaving cricket out,” he said.
Today Cricket PNG Air Niugini Crocs go for gold when they take on favourites Cricket Australia National Indigenous XI.
The Crocs hold an advantage over the CA Indigenous side having beaten them in the round robin.
Captain Hitolo Areni was quietly confident saying his top order batsmen had dominated the competition over the week and shown great form with the bat.