{"id":214588,"date":"2015-11-16T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T20:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=214588"},"modified":"2015-11-16T06:00:04","modified_gmt":"2015-11-15T20:00:04","slug":"sllbi-head-murig-ready-to-face-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/sllbi-head-murig-ready-to-face-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"SLLBI head Murig ready to face challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newly elected Saipan Little League Board Inc. president A.J. Palacios Murig said he and the rest of the officials are ready to face the challenges as they prepare to open the 2016 season of the Commonwealth\u2019s longest-running youth baseball program.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Saipan Little League Board Inc. expects the opening of the 2016 season would be delayed since both the Francisco M. \u201cTan Ko\u201d Palacios and Miguel \u201cTan Ge\u201d Pangelinan ballfields are awaiting repairs. (Jon Perez)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Damage at the Francisco M. \u201cPalacios\u201d and Miguel Basa \u201cTan Ge\u201d Pangelinan ballfields and depleted funds to start the season are among the challenges that the new SLLBI board is facing.<\/p>\n

But Murig, one of the grandsons of CNMI Sports Hall of Famer Francisco M. \u201cTan Ko\u201d Palacios, is optimistic that the current SLLBI board will hurdle the obstacles.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite all the problems we still remain optimistic. All it takes is commitment. We know that we\u2019re facing a lot of problems but the board thinks we can overcome everything if we all worked together,\u201d said Murig, who was elected as the youngest SLLBI president by the seven-member board.<\/p>\n

The \u201cTan Ko\u201d baseball field and the Miguel \u201cTan Ge\u201d Pangelinan softball field have suffered major damage after Typhoon Soudelor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know both fields are damaged that\u2019s why we\u2019re going to discuss with Tony Rogolifoi how we can help since the board feels that we are obligated to assist because we are the main users of both fields and where our leagues are played for years,\u201d said Murig.<\/p>\n

The former Saipan Little League chief statistician added that one of their plans is to use other fields on the island like the ones in Kan Pacific in Marpi, Dandan, and Capital Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of other fields that we could use and it was also brought up in one of our meetings. Using other venues is our back up plan. As much as possible we want to continue using both fields at the Oleai Sports Complex since it is more accessible,\u201d said Murig.<\/p>\n

Murig added the board is still targeting to open the season in mid or end of January next year but is not taking out the possibility of delay with the opening.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are already anticipating a possibility of a delay in the opening with the current condition of the field. We\u2019re still hoping that both fields would be ready so we could open the season in mid January, we wanted to start early to give the All-Star teams more time to practice for their respective regional tournaments,\u201d said Murig.<\/p>\n

Funding is another problem for the current SLLBI board with Murig saying that they only have less than $100 right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur funds are depleted and we also face that problem. The Legislature gives an annual appropriation of $25,000 but we use that money to fund the travel costs for the district and regional tournaments. But right now, we\u2019re thinking of also using some of the money for the coming season,\u201d said Murig.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother possibility is to write letters to seek support from the business sector. We know the impact made by Soudelor to all of us, especially the businesses but it is not bad to try,\u201d said Murig, who added that in 2013 Saipan World Resort was the Saipan Little League\u2019s corporate sponsor.<\/p>\n

Former Saipan senator Rey Yumul (vice president), Malcolm Omar (secretary), Tom Guerrero (treasurer), Ton Camacho (player agent), John Manibusan (safety officer), and Joe Lizama (chief statistician) are the other SLLBI officers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newly elected Saipan Little League Board Inc. president A.J. Palacios Murig said he and the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":214599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6131,1256,1571,6333],"class_list":["post-214588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-john-manibusan","tag-sllbi","tag-tan-ko-palacios","tag-typhoon-soudelor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214588","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=214588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}