PSS Athletics inks MOA with nat’l sports feds

The Public School System Athletics Program inked a school year 2024-2025 memorandum of agreement with its seven national sports federation partners in a signing ceremony to guide their mutual sporting goals at the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium conference room last Friday.

The ceremony was attended by PSS Athletics Program director Nick Gross and Athletics Programs staff; Education Commissioner Dr. Lawrence F. Camacho and PSS key management; Board of Education acting chair Greg Borja; Northern Marianas Sports Association president Jerry Tan; and the presidents/representatives of the seven national sports federations from the NMI Football Association, Northern Marianas Athletics, NMI Basketball Federation, NMI Softball Association, NMI Volleyball Association, Northern Marianas Badminton Association, and the Northern Marianas National Paddle Sports Federation.

NMIFA representatives were executive director Ross Zapanta and executive committee member Catherine Attao-Toves; NMISA was represented by president Froilan Camacho and Kyle Hocog; NMIVA was represented by vice president Tyce Mister; NMIBF was represented by president James Lee; NMBA was represented by president Merlie Tolentino; NMNPSF was represented by president Justin Andrew; and NMA was represented by president Ray Tebuteb.

A presentation of each of the programs/federations’ statistics and successes from the previous school year 2023-2024 was shown, as each of the federations’ representatives went up to sign their respective MOAs with Gross, Camacho, associate commissioner Eric Magofna, and acting senior director of the PSS Office of Student and Support Services, Brandon Nicholas.

Gross, in his welcome remarks, said that the partnerships is what makes the programs possible. “I will never have the capacity to hire the number of people—and the capacity that it takes to officiate and coach—all of these things that the federations do to support the programs. In the end, what they create is sustainability. Prior to this long process of coming together in these formal partnerships, we struggled—whether it was on the PSS side, or on the federations’ side,” he said.

Gross then said that the signing ceremony came into fruition because every year they try to improve the delivery of sports and try to improve the optics of what they do collectively. “Each one of these federations is incredible in what they’re doing, but I think this is an opportunity to really shine on them, which in turn shines on us. And so, it really is one of these mutually beneficial things that we’ve come a long way in drawing this up.”

Camacho, for his part, said that the signing ceremony was “an honorable thing.” He thanked Gross and the minimal staff of the Athletics Program—Lia Rangamar, Lawrence Camacho, and Rehlina Keller—for the work they’ve done.

“I’ll reiterate and echo the words of sentiment of Nick for those out there partnering with us. Without you, I don’t think we would have been as successful. As much as Nick wants it to be a successful program, we need you, so we thank you for this day,” he said.

Tan, who also signed an MOA for NMSA as the CNMI’s governing body of sports, said that with all the previous games—2022 Pacific Mini Games, 2023 Pacific Games, and the 2024 Micronesian Games—he noticed that most of the athletes are young.

“I salute all the federations that are smart enough to engage Nick actively, because it’s true that in inter-scholastics, you develop grassroots—these are the young kids and they all want to play with the schools. So, it’s been a very good partnership that I’ve witnessed in the last three years,” he said.

He added that the partnership between PSS, NMSA, and the national federations is a success. “It’s a win, win, win for everybody. I also want to thank our national federations for being active. NMSA is just the governing body that’s working with Nick to provide the opportunity for students to compete. And so, we would love to expand to even more sports.”