{"id":277047,"date":"2018-05-29T06:04:39","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T20:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=277047"},"modified":"2018-05-29T06:04:39","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T20:04:39","slug":"carol-plays-for-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/carol-plays-for-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Carol plays for home"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_277048\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-277048\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/juniot-itf-pix.jpg\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-277048\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The CNMI\u2019s Carol Lee poses with her doubles and singles awards after ruling the 2018 Northern Marianas Junior Championships last Sunday at the Pacific Islands Club Saipan hard courts. (Contributed Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The CNMI\u2019s Carol Lee took a long journey to get home and play in the 2018 Northern Marianas Junior Championships.<\/p>\n<p>She went on to top both the singles and doubles events of the ITF Juniors competition, making the trip from Africa to Saipan worth it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a long journey but it was definitely worth it. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I\u2019m proud of representing Saipan and anywhere I go play my tourneys, I would always represent Saipan, my home,\u201d Lee said after beating Hong Kong\u2019s Wing Ka Lin in the singles finals last Sunday at the Pacific Islands Club Saipan court.<\/p>\n<p>The 16-year-old was in Morocco for a month and played her last tournament there at the Mediterran\u00e9e Avenir. She stayed at the ITF regional facility in the African nation to train and just arrived on Saipan a day before the tournament started.<\/p>\n<p>Lee could have passed on the chance to play in the CNMI-hosted event, as it was just a Grade 5 competition and the Junior ITF rankings points at stake would not greatly affect her rankings. Lee has also been competing in high-ranking events off-island, but she wanted to come home and play.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt feels good winning at home. I\u2019ve always wanted to win this tournament and I am really happy my schedule allowed me to play here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>After sweeping past week\u2019s competition, the Commonwealth is scheduled to leave Saipan for Fiji today to train in the regional facility and later represent the islands in the Nations Cup Pacific.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter that, I will train and play in the ITF tournaments there. My focus now will be to prepare for tournaments in the latter half of the year, which will be very important,\u201d  Lee said.<\/p>\n<p>The Saipan Community School graduate is hoping to bolster her world rankings to be able to play more Grade 1, A and B competitions. She is currently ranked at No. 241 and achieved her highest rank early this year at No. 178.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The CNMI\u2019s Carol Lee took a long journey to get home and play in the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":277048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1814,3429,21355,21318],"class_list":["post-277047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-carol-lee","tag-itf","tag-pacific-nation","tag-wing-ka-lin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277047","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=277047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}