{"id":351246,"date":"2021-09-06T06:00:46","date_gmt":"2021-09-05T20:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=351246"},"modified":"2021-09-06T06:00:46","modified_gmt":"2021-09-05T20:00:46","slug":"north-pacific-regional-championships-postponed-anew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/north-pacific-regional-championships-postponed-anew\/","title":{"rendered":"North Pacific Regional Championships postponed anew"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"NMITA
Jimin Woo, seen here in a file photo, topped the boys 18-and-under division Northern Mariana Islands Tennis Association junior tennis rankings and is a shoe-in for this coming November\u2019s 2022 North Pacific Regional Championships in Guam. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 2022 North Pacific Regional Championships in Guam has again been postponed with the annual tournament that pits the best junior tennis players in this part of the Pacific now set for November.
\nNorthern Mariana Islands Tennis Association president Jeff Race said the tournament, which was originally slated in June then moved to September, has now been moved to November because of the U.S. territory\u2019s increasing cases of COVID-19. It was postponed altogether in 2020. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been postponed until November. Guam has been averaging over 160 COVID-19 cases a day. No way to take kids into that situation this month. We\u2019ll just keep training. It\u2019s tough for several reasons,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Race said majority of the CNMI\u2019s junior players are able to continue to train, but the multiple postponements of the NPRC and the succeeding Pacific Oceania Junior Championships are making it tough on the players. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese young players have been preparing to play in regional and Pacific-wide tennis events for two years. It\u2019s their primary goal at this stage for most of them. If you don\u2019t have the opportunity to even pursue your goals, after a while you might start to ask yourself why you\u2019ve been doing all this training and hard work? What\u2019s it for?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The CNMI National Tennis Team coach and CNMI Sports Hall of Famer said he tries his best to keep the Commonwealth\u2019s junior tennis players motivated. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs a coach you try to keep your players motivated without the goals but it\u2019s a challenge. Some of the most focused kids are just rolling with the punches and patiently waiting for their chance. I try to emphasize that we\u2019re all having fun out there playing the sport but having and reaching for goals is really what gets the serious players\u2019 blood going,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Race lamented that the other difficult aspect of multiple postponements due to COVID-19 is the timing. <\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last 30 years we had developed a pretty good \u2018periodization\u2019 program. It\u2019s common in sports. You try to time it so that your athletes reach their peak technically, tactically, physically, and mentally at the most important time of the year. Well, that\u2019s out the window at the moment\u2026for everyone. So at least it\u2019s fair. We\u2019ll just keep on training and I think it\u2019s key into the immediate future, say 18 months, to just maintain a flexible attitude and hopefully we\u2019ll be ready to go when the opportunity presents itself. Or, at least, more ready to go than the other guys,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

CNMI junior players that get to go to the NPRC are determined by their junior ranking that NMITA keeps tabs on. Winners of the NPRC will then go on to compete in the Pacific Oceania Junior Championships in Lautoka, Fiji. Albeit, due to the multiple postponements a trip to the South Pacific late in the year is still a big question mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2022 North Pacific Regional Championships in Guam has again been postponed with the annual…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":351229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351246","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}