{"id":291279,"date":"2019-01-04T06:06:48","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T20:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=291279"},"modified":"2019-01-04T06:06:48","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T20:06:48","slug":"cnmi-natl-players-honored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/cnmi-natl-players-honored\/","title":{"rendered":"CNMI nat\u2019l players honored"},"content":{"rendered":"
Enrico del Rosario, left, and Gianna Griffin, are seen here playing for the CNMI in an off-island tournament last year. (Contributed Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The CNMI\u2019s Gianna Griffin and Enrico Del Rosario ended the season with another feather on their cap after getting recognition from separate groups.<\/p>\n

Griffin, who played for the CNMI Women\u2019s National Team that competed in the EAFF E-1 Football Championships 2019 Round 1 in Mongolia last year, was named to the Girls Soccer Class 4A All-Section Teams of the Pennsylvania Big 5\/6 Athletic Conferences.<\/p>\n

The forward made in to the Section 3 First Team, joining 11 others on the select list. Griffin was the only Taylor Allderdice High School player to earn a spot on the elite group, which was dominated by Norwin School District. Allderdice, Norwin, Penn-Trafford, Connelsville, Hempfield, Penn Hills, and Altrobe play in Section 3 in the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League, which is under the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association and has 47 member schools.<\/p>\n

Before suiting up for Allderdice for the fall season, Griffin helped the CNMI scare Mongolia in the East Asian Football Federation tournament when she scored the Commonwealth\u2019s first goal in the competition. Mongolia went on to avoid the CNMI\u2019s upset axe after pulling off a 3-2 victory. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Del Rosario was among the players featured on HITC Sevens\u2019 video entitled \u201cBest Footballer from Every Country on Earth.\u201d HITC Sevens is a company based in United Kingdom with over 100,000 subscribers and posts short football lists on YouTube. <\/p>\n

Also featured on the video is Real Madrid and Croatia\u2019s Luka Modri\u0107, who won the 2018 Ballon d\u2019Or award to end Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s 10-year dominance.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing featured as one of the best footballers in every country on earth is a great honor and I am truly grateful for it,\u201d said Del Rosario, who donned the Commonwealth\u2019s colors on several occasions (both as youth and adult), including in the same competition in Mongolia last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always work hard and strive to be better than my last game, but I wouldn\u2019t have done it without the amazing support of my family, hardworking coaches of the NMI men\u2019s national team, officials and staff of the Northern Mariana Islands Football Association, and the rest of the my teammates. Seeing myself in both videos (he also appeared in an earlier video) is like seeing the Blue Ayuyu team as well because they bring the best out in me every time we play,\u201d the CNMI vice captain added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CNMI\u2019s Gianna Griffin and Enrico Del Rosario ended the season with another feather on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":291280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-291279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-cnmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291279","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=291279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}