The inaugural 2011 Shirley\u2019s Badminton Classic opened last Saturday at the TSL Sports Complex with over 60 players joining the weekend competition.<\/p>\n
The event kicked off with the traditional parade of teams and featured five badminton clubs\u2014Taga, Saipan Badminton Club, Dberks Blazers, Shirley\u2019s Badminton Club, and the Golden Racquets.<\/p>\n
Susan Macario, general manager of competition sponsor Shirley\u2019s Coffee Shop, graced the opening ceremony of the mixed doubles event and was joined by Northern Marianas Badminton Association president Jerry Tan.<\/p>\n
\u201cShirley\u2019s Coffee Shop is proud to be part of the growth of badminton in the CNMI. We will do this tournament annual and hopefully more players will join every year. Supporting a competition like this is our way of helping develop various sports in the CNMI,\u201d Macario said.<\/p>\n
Shirley\u2019s Coffee Shop will also host a basketball league next month and supports football and futsal teams.<\/p>\n
The 2011 Shirley\u2019s Badminton Classic will have competition in six divisions: Classes A,B and C, U12, U18, and 40-and-above. Games will be played from Friday to Sunday.<\/p>\n
Except for the youth division, the five other categories will have a round-robin format. Undefeated squads after the round-robin play will automatically advance to the championship matches. If there will be no unbeaten teams in the elimination round then only the Top 4 teams will advance to the crossover semifinals. In case of a tie, a knockout game will be played. For a three-way tie, the team with the most set points will draw a bye and face the winner of the bottom two playoffs. <\/p>\n
The U18 division will be a double-round robin affair and the Top 2 placers will battle for the championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The inaugural 2011 Shirley\u2019s Badminton Classic opened last Saturday at the TSL Sports Complex with over 60 players joining the weekend competition.<\/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-154817","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\/154817","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=154817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}