{"id":227262,"date":"2016-05-09T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-05-08T20:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=227262"},"modified":"2016-05-09T06:00:28","modified_gmt":"2016-05-08T20:00:28","slug":"thea-makes-jump-ncaa-official","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/thea-makes-jump-ncaa-official\/","title":{"rendered":"Thea makes jump to NCAA official"},"content":{"rendered":"
The CNMI\u2019s Thea Minor, seated left, poses for a photo with New Mexico Military Institute women\u2019s tennis team coach Dan O\u2019Connell, standing left, athletic director Jose Barron, and teammate Lorraine Banimataku before signing a letter of intent to play for NCAA Division II\u2019s Henderson State University last week. (NMMI Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Former CNMI junior player Thea Minor has signed a letter of intent to play for Henderson State University in Division II of the National Collegiate Athletics Association.<\/p>\n

Minor along with Vanuatu\u2019s Lorraine Banimataku, made their commitment to Henderson official last Tuesday (Wednesday on Saipan) in front of Dan O\u2019Connell, head coach of New Mexico Military Institute\u2019s women\u2019s tennis team, which has been working with the Division II school in discovering players and training them for higher-level competition. NMMI athletic director Jose Barron was also present at the signing ceremony.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are excited. Lorraine and I signed up our next two years with Henderson State University with a full scholarship. Thank you to our friends and family who have given us so much support since the start,\u201d said Minor, who is now playing in the NJCCA Nationals in Texas for her farewell season with NMMI as she will be graduating in less than two weeks.<\/p>\n

Minor also thanked NMMI and O\u2019Connell for helping them become better players and individuals on and off the court. The CNMI and Vanuatu players are the fourth and fifth netters from the Pacific to receive athletic scholarships from Henderson. Fiji\u2019s Daneric Hazelman and Annie Shannon and the Solomon Island\u2019s Amanda Korinihona were the first three.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis program is developed from the Pacific to NMMI and to Henderson,\u201d O\u2019Connell was quoted as saying in a story about his wards move to Henderson.<\/p>\n

At Henderson, which competes in the tough Great American Conference, Minor will be taking up nursing and she and Banimataku will also join the Reddies\u2019 cross country team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am thrilled to have these two players join our program next season,\u201d Henderson women\u2019s tennis coach Brenda Joiner was quoted as saying in a separate story posted at Henderson\u2019s official athletics website. They will fit right into what we are trying to accomplish here at HSU and I can\u2019t wait to get them in a Reddie uniform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Northern Mariana Islands Tennis Association official Jeff Race, who coached Minor in regional tournaments, said the latest development on Minor\u2019s collegiate career will inspire the young players on island.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt (playing in college and getting a scholarship) is a realistic goal that our players here should aspire for. Every day when I train our players, I talk to them about this opportunity, so every time this good news comes, this inspire them to work harder on their game, knowing that one day, they could follow the footsteps of Thea and others, too,\u201d Race said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to play in college is such a great accomplishment, especially if you come from a small island like ours. Congratulations to Thea,\u201d added Race, who himself played in NCAA for Chapman University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former CNMI junior player Thea Minor has signed a letter of intent to play for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":227284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8840,11397,2340,527],"class_list":["post-227262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-henderson-state-university","tag-hsu","tag-nmmi","tag-vanuatu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227262","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=227262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}