After making the islands his home for the better part of the past three decades, Saipan Swim Club founder and sports event organizer extraordinaire Wilhelm \u201cBill\u201d Sakovich returned to Saipan Tuesday night to help with the final preparations for the 6th Micronesian Games.<\/p>\n
The NMASA Sports Hall of Fame inductee and executive secretary for the Micronesian Games Organizing Committee said he\u2019s pretty happy that the public and private sectors have both come together to help organize the Games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government and the community seem to be on the right track. Everybody is doing what needs to be done,\u201d he said. \u201cEspecially with the times now, the government cannot really afford to put in money, but they certainly have lent their support as far as facilities and personnel are concerned,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
More impressively, Sakovich said the private sector has really come ready to bat for the Games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019ve heard is that they (Micronesian Games Organizing Committee) are hitting the $200,000-mark. If I\u2019m not mistaken, when we did the 1990 Games we only had a budget of $400,000 budget. But that included a lot of major facility repairs. Today, it\u2019s minimal and the government is doing what it can to upgrade the facilities we have now,\u201d he said,<\/p>\n
Sakovich said unlike 16 years ago, Saipan now has more sports facilities and venues to stage the Games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the sports facilities have been an issue at all. We already have facilities. They may not be in great of shape, but they\u2019re being worked on with minimal expenses. And I wouldn\u2019t have expected the government to construct a new pool or gym either. It wasn\u2019t at all necessary. We\u2019re doing the Games with sports facilities that are already available,\u201d he said<\/p>\n
As executive secretary for the MGOC, Sakovich said he will continue with the plan already being implemented and \u201cjust work with everybody on matters that need to be attended to more thoroughly.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m confident that the Games will be a success. There are just a few things that need to be tied up. For one, accommodations need a lot of attention and we\u2019re already working on that. I feel that that\u2019s one of the more critical areas for the Games,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sakovich said how the CNMI hosts the over 1,400 athletes and officials expected here for the Games from June 23 to July 2 will have a long and lasting impression on how the islands and its people will be perceived.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I said before I don\u2019t care how many gold medals a team wins or how many games they lose, what participants will remember is how the accommodations were. Is there food? Is there water? Does the toilets work? Are there showers? I think that\u2019s why we have to make sure that everything is operating a 110 percent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Leaving anew his \u201cretirement home\u201d at Hilo, Hawaii does not seem to bother Sakovich since helping in the Games is all natural to him, having organized sports events here on Saipan the past 30 or so years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m basically happy to do it. They\u2019re covering all the expenses for me, which is all I really asked for. This is what I\u2019ve been doing here for the past 32 years. I\u2019m happy to do it. I was in Palau last year and I did the same thing. I was in Norfolk Island doing the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After making the islands his home for the better part of the past three decades, Saipan Swim Club founder and sports event organizer extraordinaire Wilhelm \u201cBill\u201d Sakovich returned to Saipan Tuesday night to help with the final preparations for the 6th Micronesian Games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}