{"id":259123,"date":"2017-08-30T06:06:15","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T20:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=259123"},"modified":"2017-08-30T06:06:15","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T20:06:15","slug":"koblerville-basketball-court-freshened-anew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/koblerville-basketball-court-freshened-anew\/","title":{"rendered":"Koblerville basketball court freshened anew"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Rev. Fr. Isaac Ayuyu offers a prayer and blesses the newly renovated Koblerville basketball court during the court’s grand unveiling on Monday. (Kimberly A. Bautista)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Koblervillle basketball court was spruced up again and a ribbon cutting ceremony was held Monday to turn over the responsibility of its upkeep to the Division of Parks and Recreation. <\/p>\n

Gov. Ralph DLG Torres and Lt. Gov. Victor B. Hocog turned the court over to Parks and Recreation director Eli Cabrera, who said the basketball court has been renovated quite a few times in the past couple of years.<\/p>\n

Cabrera said that all he asks for is for those who use the court to take care of it. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just hope that our community understands the importance of the area and maintaining, and keeping it usable,\u201d said Cabrera. <\/p>\n

His biggest concern is the several instances of vandalism. This time around, Cabrera hopes that the court will remain usable for a longer period of time. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we come back in one month, hopefully the rims are still there and the nets of the basketball rims, and I hope there is no graffiti,\u201d said Cabrera. \u201cOur people should report any wrongdoing, please report it to the proper authorities.\u201d <\/p>\n

According to Cabrera, the efforts made to maintain the court is pointless if those who use it don\u2019t maintain it as well. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s useless for us to keep maintaining, when on the other side, there is vandalism going on,\u201d said Cabrera. <\/p>\n

The proposal to renovate the basketball court again was led by Rep. Joseph Lee Pan Guerrero (R-Saipan) in the middle of last year, in the wake of a plea of a constituent. Upon visiting it, Guerrero said he was disheartened to see the state of the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came out here, it was littered with syringes and ziplock bags. They used it [basketball court] as a drug facility,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Instead of seeking government funding to initiate the renovations, Guerrero decided it was best to reach out to community investors because, according to him, it could take a year just to obtain government appropriation.<\/p>\n

According to Guerrero, the companies he reached out to are advocates of giving back to the community such as IT&E, IP&E, and E-Land Group. After three months, the companies informed him that they were interested in supporting the cause. <\/p>\n

The improved court includes new nets, new rims, a new paint job, new bleachers, and a new fence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Koblervillle basketball court was spruced up again and a ribbon cutting ceremony was held…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":259127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[310,46,12225],"class_list":["post-259123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-basketball","tag-ceremony","tag-eli-cabrera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259123","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}