{"id":244494,"date":"2017-01-16T06:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-01-15T20:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=244494"},"modified":"2017-01-16T06:00:52","modified_gmt":"2017-01-15T20:00:52","slug":"guam-star-team-dominates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/guam-star-team-dominates\/","title":{"rendered":"Guam All-Star Team dominates"},"content":{"rendered":"
The CNMI\/Knights\u2019 Lawrence Laniyo tackles a Guam All-Star Team running back, while two more CNMI\/Knights players get ready to provide help defense during the second quarter of their matua division game in the 3rd Marianas Friendship Bowl held last Saturday at the CPA Airport Field. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Guam All-Star Team capitalized on its experience to cruise past the CNMI\/Knights, 44-0, in the matua division game in the 3rd Marianas Friendship Bowl held last Saturday at the CPA Airport Field.<\/p>\n

The visiting squad scored seven touchdowns and a couple of conversions to post the convincing win and made up for its close 12-6 triumph when the CNMI vs Guam game in the matua division (10 to 14 age group) was held in 2015. Evan Fernandez, Caiyle Gogue, Eugene Arriola, Noah Medler, Darren Cepeda, Travon Jacobs, Annaliah Quichocho, and Laethian Gumaban earned the TDs for the Guam All-Stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t expect to have this big a winning margin. Actually, we don\u2019t know what to expect from the game and from the CNMI Team because we\u2019re not familiar with how the team plays and we only knew they are a new squad,\u201d offensive coordinator Greg Jacobs said in an interview with Saipan Tribune after the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith that, our mindset was to treat the match as if it is a championships game, so the boys really went all out and showed a lot of intensity. We executed our plays well,\u201d said Jacobs, whose players are selected from the various villages\/schools in Guam and from the teams seeing action in the island\u2019s competitive youth league.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese players have been playing in a while so definitely the experience worked to their advantage. Some of them are teammates in schools and in the Guam youth league so they are familiar with each other\u2019s game,\u201d the elder Jacobs added.<\/p>\n

While the Guam All-Stars have been into the sport and organized leagues for years, the opposite can be said to the CNMI\/Knights side, which was formed just last year with players coming mostly from Mt. Carmel School <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is very understandable to see a young team like them struggle in this game. But, there are a lot of promising talents. We saw kids who really have the ability to excel if given training and exposure,\u201d Jacobs said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best thing to do is to continue to play and nurture these talents. If possible, build a league, start to 3 to 4 teams and have them play at least once a week,\u201d the Guam All-Stars offensive coordinator added.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Knights coach John Blanco acknowledged the squad\u2019s lack of experience cost them the match, but said despite the downfall his players are determined to train harder and keep playing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CNMI Matua Team consisted mostly of players that never played before, including a good number of 10 to 12 year olds. Despite the loss, the kids are excited about the prospect of playing more football and I am happy to see that many have developed a new found passion for the sport of football,\u201d Blanco said.<\/p>\n

Besides the matua game, Guam and the Knights also played in the high school match and results will be reported this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guam All-Star Team capitalized on its experience to cruise past the CNMI\/Knights, 44-0, in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":244500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[679,51,163,15142],"class_list":["post-244494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-football-2","tag-guam","tag-kids","tag-marianas-friendship-bowl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244494","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=244494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}