Northern Mariana Islands Volleyball Association is pleased to announce a new indoor volleyball program kicking off this week!<\/p>\n
In an effort to increase the youth players\u2019 exposure, NMIVA is initiating an All\u2010Star High School Team program.\u00a0Initially we will begin with one male team and one female team consisting of 30 players each. Not all players will\u00a0necessarily be selected to attend or play in competitions. This privilege will be earned through hard work, dedication and\u00a0commitment to the program.<\/p>\n
The All-Stars teams will be selected from players who participated in the\u00a0Marianas Interscholastic Sports Organization league\u2019s most recent seasons (SY2014-15). Total number of players will be about 60 players. The\u00a0recent MISO season champion teams will automatically be included and then MISO players will be recruited via nomination by their MISO coaches from each and every other team in the league.
\nFundamentally, NMIVA has worked with MISO for the past few years helping with its high school league program, which is inclusive of public and private schools. This program has steadily produced better players each season; as such it was recognized that the community was ready for the next steps.\u00a0MISO and NMIVA looked at it and identified two objectives. First,\u00a0expand to junior high school and second create next tier competition opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think that after this pilot season, we should have a better sense of the base of players that we have to work with and develop over the next 3-4 years. In a long-term vision, these players would either be heading to college with amazing volleyball skills or else continuing to represent a CNMI National Volleyball Team,\u201d offered Nick Gross, MISO director.<\/p>\n
Guam Volleyball Federation has invited the NMIVA to enter teams in their high school championship\u00a0tournament. The boys\u2019 tournament will be from May 29 to June 1, 2015, and the girls\u2019 tournament is set in October with the exact dates to be announced at a latter time. These will be the first competitions that the All-Stars teams will target.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had to look at the fact that our limited resources need to support the greatest return for the total growth of our sport. We are seeing our initial target population for off island competition is likely those 14-25 ages looking out over the next 5-10 years,\u201d said NMIVA president Laurie Peterka<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve wanted to expand these opportunities for some time now, but we lacked volunteers or resources to help make additional programs possible. Now that we have Darcy and Codie to help Nick and I, we can push forward on our dreams of seeing competitive indoor continue both here and regionally; and eventually internationally. We have to take baby steps and build our capacity so that we have strong programs, dedicated players and a good shot at competing successfully in the regional and international arenas,\u201d said Peterka.<\/p>\n
Peterka further commented, \u201cFor resource support, we are applying to the Oceania Zonal\u00a0Volleyball\u00a0Association (OZVA) and Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC). We\u2019ve also reached out to USA Volleyball, who helped by donating volleyballs and training videos.\u201d (NMIVA)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Northern Mariana Islands Volleyball Association is pleased to announce a new indoor volleyball program kicking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2260,951,394,1845],"class_list":["post-192905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-guam-volleyball-federation","tag-laurie-peterka","tag-miso","tag-nmiva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192905","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}