{"id":244325,"date":"2017-01-12T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T20:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=244325"},"modified":"2017-01-12T06:00:04","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T20:00:04","slug":"sllb-teams-prep-2017-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/sllb-teams-prep-2017-season\/","title":{"rendered":"SLLB teams prep up for 2017 season"},"content":{"rendered":"
McDonald\u2019s players practice at the Miguel \u201cTan Ge\u201d Basa Pangelinan Ballfield yesterday in preparation for the new season of the Saipan Little League Baseball. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You know the new season of Saipan Little League Baseball is forthcoming when you see players with their bats and gloves getting off from their cars and heading to the baseball and softball fields at the Oleai Sports Complex after school hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re getting ready for the new season,\u201d said McDonald\u2019s assistant coach Anthony Tenorio, who picked up some of their Major division players and brought them to the Miguel \u201cTan Ge\u201d Pangelinan Ballfield yesterday for their training session.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been practicing since September,\u201d added Anthony, who along with his younger brother and the team\u2019s head coach Patrick, conducted warm-up throwing and catching drills yesterday with the first batch of players that arrived at the field.<\/p>\n

McDonald\u2019s has 14 players on its Major squad and seven of them are holdovers from last year\u2019s squad.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were the last ones to make it to the playoffs last year, so hopefully we will have a better position this season. There are seven players returning this year and their experience will be a big factor in our campaign this season. Hopefully, we will have better and wiser players,\u201d said Anthony, whose players train twice a week or every Wednesday and Friday with each session lasting for two hours.<\/p>\n

McDonald\u2019s took the field from the Pirates, who had Gus Pangelinan leading the group\u2019s practice yesterday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pirates have two teams this season so we have a lot of coaches,\u201d said Pangelinan. <\/p>\n

The Pirates had one team last season and missed the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, the goal this season is to make it to the playoffs. However, we are just happy to see a lot of players coming out this season to learn the sport,\u201d said one of the Pirates coaches.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re excited to play. I will do my best to help my team and will follow our coaches\u2019 instructions so I will become a better player,\u201d said J.R. Suel, who was a pitcher and the shortstop on the Pirates\u2019 team last season.<\/p>\n

The new SLLB season is originally scheduled to start at the end of this month, but SLLB president A.J. Murig said the opening date maybe pushed back to give other teams more time to prepare and meet the league\u2019s requirements.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a managers meeting this Friday and we will let them know about the opening date,\u201d Murig said.<\/p>\n

The meeting is set for 5:30pm at the conference room of the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium.<\/p>\n

Murig added that to this date 11 teams are entered in the Major division, seven in Juniors, and five in Seniors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know the new season of Saipan Little League Baseball is forthcoming when you see…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":244329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[11367,15089,490,1200],"class_list":["post-244325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-anthony-tenorio","tag-gus-pangelinan","tag-oleai-sports-complex","tag-sllb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244325","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=244325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}