The Fiesta Resort and Spa Femme Fatales defeated the Marianas Eye Institute Eye Ballers, 4-2, at the Oleai Sports Complex to take the Northern Mariana Islands Football Association Women\u2019s League crown.<\/p>\n
The back-and-forth action was intense as the teams played on the best surface this season in the middle of the track and field facility. All agreed that the improved playing conditions allowed for a more free-flowing style of soccer and the kickers went wild between the lines.<\/p>\n
Femme Fatales head coach MD Robikul was ecstatic after the game saying that winning the title was his goal from the beginning. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am very good, felling great. It was my goal to win the 2006 Women\u2019s League championship from the start,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The coach named Brenda Schultz as the star of the game but said the key to victory was the team\u2019s ability to work together on the field. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe played great today but the most important part of the game was the passing. The passing was very good today. Excellent passing,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Robikul credited his opponents with solid play, as did his leading scorer Morgan Rose. Rose found the back of the net twice for the Femme Fatales and she said her team rose to the occasion in the champion game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it went really well. The Eyeballers really gave us a run for our money. They really pushed us hard but we pushed back. It was goal, goal, goal, goal back and forth. It was fun game. We came out on top. I think we wanted it a little bit more and we did what we had to do,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Rose also lauded the efforts of her teammates for a successful season\u2019s effort and a job well done. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so proud of all the players. They\u2019ve really improved throughout the year. We have some players on the team that have never played before so we\u2019ve really come a long way,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The scoring got started in the first half when Rose fired in a penalty kick that resulted from a hand ball in front of the goal tender, but Becca Rath evened the game at one apiece minutes later when her shot squeaked past Maria Ornes.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t take the Femme Fatales long to answer as Schultz and Rose passed back and forth down the field before Schultz booted the ball from the right side and found the far corner to give the Femme Fatales the 2-1 lead.<\/p>\n
The Femme Fatales took a 3-1 lead in the second half when Rose found the mesh on a sliding kick, but the Eyeballers wouldn\u2019t give up. The teams traded goals late but the Eyeballers were unable to complete their second upset in as many weeks and finished second. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe did great. We have no complaints about how we played. Everybody did a great job. We\u2019re second place. My teammates did great. We\u2019re really sad about splitting up because we really like playing together and we work together really well,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
UMDA Hot Salsa 5, Saipan Grand Hotel Mamma Mia\u2019s 3<\/p>\n
After losing to the fourth place team in the semifinals, the UMDA Hot Salsa came out to the Oleai Sports Complex on fire in their season finale to defeat the Saipan Grand Hotel Mamma Mia\u2019s, 5-3.<\/p>\n
The win gave Hot Salsa a third place finish on the year and head coach Jaime Saiki said that he wasn\u2019t disappointed in the result despite completing the regular season atop the standings. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was a very successful season even though we finished third but we started this league and everybody improved. We all had a lot of fun and everything was cool,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
His counterpart was also pleased with the way his players improved as Mamma Mia\u2019s head coach Wes Bogdan thanked his squad for providing some of his happiest memories on the pitch.<\/p>\n
\u201cTotally fantastic. This was one of the best year\u2019s I\u2019ve ever had coaching soccer. I saw some players really improve and the fell in love with the game and that\u2019s what soccer is all about,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Standout Sarah Helbert played another great game for his team but Bogdan credited goaltender TeMary Gramlich with hanging in between the pipes while under a flurry of shots from UMDA\u2019s red hots.<\/p>\n
She got shot at from about every different angle and a couple got away but that\u2019s how it goes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Fiesta Resort and Spa Femme Fatales defeated the Marianas Eye Institute Eye Ballers, 4-2, at the Oleai Sports Complex to take the Northern Mariana Islands Football Association Women\u2019s League crown.<\/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-106889","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\/106889","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=106889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}