More than $43K in airfare, per diem costs for Mini Games due today

Sports organizations sending athletes to the 2005 South Pacific Mini Games need to remit the rest of their airfare payments to the Northern Marianas Amateur Sports Association today or endanger their chances of competing in the quadrennial event set from July 25 to Aug. 4 in Palau.

According to NMASA treasurer Margaret Palacios, the CNMI’s sports governing body has so far collected only $18,702 of the $61,800 needed to cover the airfare and a portion of the per diem cost of the 103 athletes and coaches bound for the Mini Games, leaving NMASA $43,908 short.

Each delegate needs to come up with $800 to go to Palau, but only need to come up with $600 for today’s deadline. The final $200 installment is due in May.

Because of the sheer number of their delegations, softball, baseball, and canoeing are understandably the sports most far behind in payments

Palacios’ records indicate that Saipan Softball Association has only turned over $3,190 of the $21,000 it needs to send 35 members of the men’s and women’s team to Palau.

The Saipan Major League is also in a bind with only $2,912 so far remitted of the required $9,000 it needs for 15 baseball players to make the trip to the Mini Games.

Canoeing is in more treacherous waters than either softball or baseball, with the sport not even giving a single cent of the $7,800 it needs to send a 13-man crew to Palau.

The Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association has come up with only $1,000 of the $3,600 needed for its six-man, ping-pong delegation to Palau, while the Saipan Swim Club needs only $2,400 more to complete the $7,200-cost to allows 12 of its members to make a splash in the Meyuns Swimming Pool.

Triathlon, so far, has remitted $2,000 out of the $3,600 it needs to send a three-man men’s team and a three-man women’s team to the multi-sport competition, which would be held on Palau’s K-B Bridge area.

The figure, however, could go down if the Northern Mariana Islands Triathlon Federation decides to recruit members of the SSC to compete in the women’s division.

Beach volleyball needs $2,000 so that its four-man team, composed of two men, two women, and their coach, could hit the sands of the PPR/Airai side of Palau.

Athletics, which is sending just two athletes and a coach to Palau, needs to come up with $1,200 more, the same amount owed by lawn tennis, which hopes to send six netters to the Mini Games.