{"id":360942,"date":"2022-01-31T06:02:18","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T20:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=360942"},"modified":"2022-01-31T06:02:18","modified_gmt":"2022-01-30T20:02:18","slug":"nmita-welcomes-more-opportunities-to-play-guam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/nmita-welcomes-more-opportunities-to-play-guam\/","title":{"rendered":"NMITA welcomes more opportunities to play Guam"},"content":{"rendered":"
Race<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Northern Mariana Islands Tennis Association welcomes the Marianas Cup concept being pushed by the Northern Marianas Sports Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a great idea. The more off-island competitions that most sports can get, the better,\u201d said NMITA president and CNMI Sports Hall of Fame coach Jeff Race.<\/p>\n

He added though that the Marianas Cup concept may be more important for other sports compared to tennis because before COVID-19, Commonwealth and Guam junior tennis players have already been meeting regularly through the North Pacific Regional Championships.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do have a fair bit of interaction with Guam as we play them every year inthe North Pacific Regional Championships. But if we can work it out we\u2019d welcome more opportunities to go play against Guam,\u201d said Race.<\/p>\n

And speaking of the North Pacific Regional Championships, the NMITA head said he\u2019s still not sure if they\u2019ll have it this year following cancellations in 2020 and 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m waiting to hear back from the Oceania Tennis Federation as to what the status is this year if we\u2019re having it. But you know it\u2019s so hard. We thought we\u2019d get out of this thing and Delta would be finished and then Omicron comes along, I don\u2019t know. I guess you just have to roll with the punches. But at some point, when you say \u2018we\u2019re just going to take vaccinated people and we\u2019re going to and we\u2019re going to play\u2019\u2026you just can\u2019t stay away forever from this things. You have to jump in at some point,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Asked if NMITA has required proof of vaccination for its sanctioned tournaments, Race said they haven\u2019t but that he highly encourages tennis players who do sign up to get the vaccine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not checking on that. We\u2019re all outdoor here\u2026 Although, I tend to think at this point if you haven\u2019t gotten vaccinated then you\u2019re doing something wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under NMSA\u2019s Marianas Cup concept, CNMI teams will challenge Guam teams every year. So far, four options on how the Marianas Cup would proceed has been suggested. The first option would be Guam hosting as much as 18 sports. The second option is the CNMI will take the hosting duties. The third is the CNMI and Guam will split the sports with half taking place in the latter and the other half in the former. The fourth, which NMSA president Jerry Tan concedes is the most doable, is individual sports will arrange their respective Marianas Cup events against their counterpart sports federations in Guam.<\/p>\n

Tan earlier said the genesis of the Marianas Cup idea came about following the postponement of the 2022 Micronesian Games. He said a lot of athletes training for the 2022 Games in the Marshall Islands would effectively have to wait another year to compete in a regional event.<\/p>\n

The Marianas Cup, Tan said, would give athletes the impetus to train year-round because they always have a yearly competition to look forward to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Northern Mariana Islands Tennis Association welcomes the Marianas Cup concept being pushed by the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":360948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[51,4004],"class_list":["post-360942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-guam","tag-nmita"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360942","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=360942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}