{"id":220268,"date":"2016-02-05T06:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T20:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=220268"},"modified":"2016-02-05T06:00:48","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T20:00:48","slug":"nmi-football-featured-in-eaff-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/nmi-football-featured-in-eaff-website\/","title":{"rendered":"NMI football featured in EAFF website"},"content":{"rendered":"
CNMI youth players listen to the speech of NMIFA president Jerry Tan during a football event at the Oleai Sports Complex last month. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Northern Marianas Islands Football Association president Jerry Tan\u2019s interview with the East Asian Football Federation is now online and highlighted both the Commonwealth football\u2019s birth pains and gains.<\/p>\n

Tan disclosed how he asked a group of athletic girls who is into basketball to try futsal and eventually play football. These young girls were approached to replace the aging CNMI women\u2019s national pool and just less than a year into the program, the newcomers donned the colors of the Commonwealth in an EAFF tournament. Today, the women\u2019s program maintains a stable of young bloods and local talents.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur early national teams were mostly American teachers in their 30. They were the backbone of our teams because they\u2019ve made Saipan their home or worked there for a number of years. But since around four years ago, we\u2019ve finally started to see younger faces. Today, if you look at our women\u2019s team, they are all very young , 15, 16, 17. More girls are playing now; this is part of the growth. We have become the biggest women\u2019s team sport on the island by far,\u201d Tan was quoted as saying in the interview posted at the EAFF website.<\/p>\n

Another challenge to the youngest member of EAFF was enticing to footbal the island that is hooked on American football, baseball, and basketball.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re so in love with baseball and American football and basketball. It\u2019s hard to have a conversation with the kids and say, \u2018try this sport\u2019 when they don\u2019t see it on TV. We still don\u2019t have a lot of football on TV, but what we have is the internet. Kids who are interested can watch online, and once they learn about the sport and try it, I know they will be interested in playing,\u201d the NMIFA president said.<\/p>\n

To address this concern, NMIFA invested on its grassroots program and worked with both the public and private schools to generate interest in the sport.<\/p>\n

Today, more than 2,000 players in the youth, interscholastic, and adult leagues are competing. Players from this pool are also selected to represent the CNMI in off-island events and the availability of talents allowed the Commonwealth to send the most number of teams (6) in regional competitions last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2015, we sent out six national teams, which no other Northern Mariana sport can claim. For kids living on a small island, a chance to travel to Beijing, Thailand, Laos\u2026 that\u2019s great exposure for the kids. For some it\u2019s their first time riding an airplane,\u201d Tan added in the interview.<\/p>\n

The NMIFA head also made special mention of the CNMI Men\u2019s National Team\u2019s historic 2-1 win against Macau in 2015 EAFF East Asian Cup Preliminary Round 1 in 2014 in Guam.<\/p>\n

All these accomplishments in 10 challenging years were made possible through the help of EAFF, its member countries, AFC, and all its local partners, including the parents, coaches, and volunteers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t achieve these without getting help from a lot of people and organizations,\u201d said Tan, whose next big plan for CNMI football is to build an artificial pitch that would help popularize the sport more in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n

He added that sharing the development of the sport on the island and the steps they are taking to accomplish their goals will generate awareness on CNMI football from their counterparts in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are proud of what we have accomplished so far and it\u2019s nice to know that people outside the island know who we are and what we are capable of doing. We will continue this journey in growing the sport in the CNMI,\u201d Tan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Northern Marianas Islands Football Association president Jerry Tan\u2019s interview with the East Asian Football Federation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":220284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26,512,163,490],"class_list":["post-220268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-cnmi","tag-eaff","tag-kids","tag-oleai-sports-complex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220268","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\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}