{"id":206926,"date":"2015-08-05T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T20:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=206926"},"modified":"2015-08-05T06:00:42","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T20:00:42","slug":"cnmi-beats-italy-as-world-series-starts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/cnmi-beats-italy-as-world-series-starts\/","title":{"rendered":"CNMI beats Italy as World Series starts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The CNMI Senior All-Stars, representing the Asia-Pacific region in the 2015 World Series for 13-16-year-olds Little Leaguers, won its debut last Sunday (Monday on Saipan) with a 10-5 victory over Europe-Africa champions Lazio, Italy.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The CNMI Senior All-Stars currently have a 1-1 win-loss record in the 2015 Senior World Series in Bangor, Maine. It defeated Italy, 10-6, in its first game but succumbed to host team Old Town, 6-2, in its second. (www.worldseries.bangorinfo.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to the 2015 Senior World Series official website (www.worldseries.bangorinfo.com), bats were out in full force at the Shawn T. Mansfield Stadium in Bangor, Maine when the CNMI faced Italy in the opening day\u2019s second game.<\/p>\n

The CNMI, which swept all its games in Asia-Pacific Regional Tournament held on Saipan, and Italy combined for 18 hits.<\/p>\n

The Commonwealth, which is making its second straight appearance in the Senior World Series, used small ball as an advantage to get runs early and throughout the game.<\/p>\n

The team coached by manager Greg Camacho and head coach Lawrence Camacho had a couple of hits to start the game. A sacrifice bunt by Henry Lizama scored the first run for the CNMI, which exemplified the team\u2019s versatility at the plate.<\/p>\n

The CNMI struck for three runs in first inning and then put five runs on the board in the fifth inning off hits from Joaquin Chong, Franklin Lizama, and Roke Tenorio. This made the game 8-3 after four innings.<\/p>\n

The World Series\u2019 official website reported that many of the runs allowed by Italy were unearned, as they finished the game with five errors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout all of the tournaments before this we never had that many errors. I don\u2019t know if it was jet lag or nerves, but we need to improve,\u201d Italy manager Fabrizio Piraino was quoted by worldseries.bangorinfo.com.<\/p>\n

CNMI assistant coach Juan Manibusan, meanwhile, told the World Series\u2019 official website how proud he was on how his boys performed on and off the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are visitors, and we like to give respect to the players, coaches volunteers, and everyone here,\u201d Manibusan said. \u201cWe just want our guys to focus, give 110 percent and have fun. We come here for the fun of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Monday on Saipan or a day after Typhoon Soudelor battered the CNMI, a heartbroken CNMI team succumbed to host team Old Town, 2-6.<\/p>\n

According to a report from Bangor Daily News, Old Town were quite impressed with how friendly the CNMI team was especially when the Asia-Pacific qualifiers gave the host team native necklaces before the game.<\/p>\n

Later in the game when Old Town\u2019s Cole Daniel was hit by a pitch from the CNMI\u2019s Virgil Secharmidal, the latter immediately walked over to first base to shake Daniel\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a great group of kids to be around,\u201d Old Town manager Troy Sheehan was quoted by Bangor Daily News after the game. \u201cI don\u2019t know if you saw me during the game but I was talking to them more than I did to my own kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their sportsmanship on the field, however, couldn\u2019t hide the fact that the CNMI players had their hearts and minds drifting to events back home where Soudelor\u2019s 105mph winds badly hammered Saipan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis typhoon really hit us hard,\u201d said CNMI manager Greg Camacho during an emotional news conference after his team\u2019s game. \u201cA lot of our kids\u2019 homes were destroyed, their houses got flattened and they\u2019re without power and water.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the information we got as well as the clips that we saw, it\u2019s really bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of the CNMI traveling party at the Senior League World Series became aware of the typhoon late Sunday (Monday on Saipan).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got wind of it last night before midnight,\u201d Camacho was again quoted by Bangor Daily News as saying. \u201cWe kept trying to make contact back home and we couldn\u2019t get through until after midnight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we heard of it we all gathered up and said a little prayer, and so far none of the kids families\u2019 are injured so we\u2019re thankful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Bangor Daily News the CNMI Senior All-Stars did consider leaving the World Series to return home but decided against it in part because of feedback they received from the island.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur families back home advised us, \u2018No, no, no, we\u2019ll take care of things, we\u2019ll deal with it, just go ahead and finish what you guys started over there and don\u2019t worry about it,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThey were the ones that advised us to go ahead and finish up and then come home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe told the kids last night that we\u2019re here for a purpose, let\u2019s just try to concentrate on that and play. A couple of them did break down because of what they had heard, but I told them that as much as possible try not to think about it. I\u2019m sure their families are safe, so just hang in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one is worse,\u201d Bangor Daily News quoted Camacho. \u201c[With] the one we went through that cut our regional tournament short, the eye of the storm didn\u2019t hit us directly, it went south of us. This one, the eye did pass straight above Saipan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CNMI Senior All-Stars, representing the Asia-Pacific region in the 2015 World Series for 13-16-year-olds…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":206927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26,361,6326,6327],"class_list":["post-206926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-cnmi","tag-italy","tag-old-town","tag-senior-world-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206926","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}