{"id":339414,"date":"2021-03-02T06:02:36","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T20:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=339414"},"modified":"2021-03-02T06:02:36","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T20:02:36","slug":"beach-volleyball-new-normal-for-pss-athletic-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/beach-volleyball-new-normal-for-pss-athletic-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Beach volleyball: New normal for PSS athletic program"},"content":{"rendered":"
Mount Carmel School\u2019s Sam Ryu sets the ball against Grace Christmas Academy during the boys championship of the 2020-2021 Public School System Interscholastic 4v4 Beach Volleyball League last Saturday at the Fiesta Resort & Spa Saipan sand court. (Kimberly A. Bautista)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Public School System Student Support Services Athletic Program had to be creative if it wanted to host organize sports this school year.<\/p>\n

One of the changes was substituting its regular indoor volleyball league with a beach volleyball competition, which concluded last Saturday with the Mount Carmel School Knights taking the boys championship of the first-ever 2020-2021 Public School System Interscholastic 4v4 Beach Volleyball League at the Fiesta Resort & Spa Saipan sand court. <\/p>\n

According to MCS player Merrick Toves, beach volleyball was much more challenging than the indoor volleyball league they were accustomed to. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really fun but it\u2019s not easy because playing and jumping around in the sand is really hard,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Randy Steele, MCS volleyball coach, said the first interscholastic beach volleyball tournament was well put together and PSS along with its supporters did a great job. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a wonderful tournament. The tournament was a huge success and the kids needed it after being stuck in- doors for a really long time so it was a great event. These guys play a lot of soccer and tennis so they\u2019re use to the heat, this doesn\u2019t affect them,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Another MCS player, Sam Ryu, said despite the challenging venue, they played hard and truly deserved the win over their rival school, Grace Christian Academy. <\/p>\n

\u201cGCA has been our rival team for quite some time now but we played hard and we deserve this win. Overall It was a good match,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Although MCS won the championship, GCA gave them a run for their money with a challenging three sets. Steele said it\u2019s about how you finish not how you start, \u201cyou need to finish strong,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

He said GCA was a great opponent, and he knew they\u2019d give MCS a hard game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not surprised that the only loss throughout the whole tournament was from them. They have some really great players and they have a really good volleyball program,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

MCS 1, who had a twice-to-beat advantage, came from behind and swept the last two sets, preventing GCA from extending to a deciding second game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Public School System Student Support Services Athletic Program had to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":339415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-339414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-pss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339414","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=339414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}