{"id":367139,"date":"2022-04-27T06:04:54","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T20:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=367139"},"modified":"2022-04-27T06:04:54","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T20:04:54","slug":"nmiva-completes-test-run-for-mini-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/nmiva-completes-test-run-for-mini-games\/","title":{"rendered":"NMIVA completes \u2018test run\u2019 for Mini Games"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Top 3 teams in the men\u2019s and women\u2019s divisions of the 25th Marianas Cup: Battle of the Beach pose for a group photo after the tournament last Sunday at the Crowne Plaza Resort sand courts. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)
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Northern Mariana Islands Volleyball Association passed its \u201ctest run\u201d for the Northern Marianas Pacific Mini Games 2022 with flying colors after successfully holding the 25th Marianas Cup: Battle of the Beach last weekend at the Crowne Plaza Resort sand courts.<\/p>\n

NMIVA president Somia Quan said they have always organized the Marianas Cup in the past but in a grander scale with several teams from off-island and at one time attracted professional volleyball players like Phil Dalhausser, Paul Baxter, and Jeff Carlucci.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe took the opportunity to host the Marianas Cup beach volleyball event, although much, much smaller than it traditionally is. This gave us a chance to do a test run of a multi-day tournament for the Pacific Mini Games. We had multiple men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams from Guam and one women\u2019s team from Yap. Palau was invited but last minute could not make it. This dry run was encouraged by the Pacific Mini Games team and they were instrumental in getting all four SENOH beach volleyball court systems up and ready by the beginning of our tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from using the Battle of the Beach as a dress rehearsal for the Mini Games this coming June, Quan said the two-day Marianas Cup also served as the start of CNMI-Guam yearly tournament between the islands\u2019 respective sports teams that the Northern Marianas Sports Association has recently championed. <\/p>\n

\u201cNMSA president Jerry Tan has encouraged all sports to develop an annual competition between the CNMI and Guam to give our athletes something to train for besides the quadrennial events and we accomplished that this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as results went, Guam swept the men\u2019s and women\u2019s divisions with the CNMI\u2019s southern neighbor even making the semifinals an all-Guam affair.<\/p>\n

In the men\u2019s side, Beach Bums of Ryan Eugenio and Anthony Santos defeated Guam Coaches of Dave Rillera and Manny Guarin in the finals, 21-17. The women\u2019s championship, meanwhile, saw K Squared of Kendra Byrd and Kristen Serrano get the better of Beach Bums of Kara Eugenio and Jeneal Besabe in a tight one, 22-20.<\/p>\n

The CNMI\u2019s Salty Digs of Tyce Mister and Chris Nelson and Sideout Saipan of Kathy Winkfield and Charnessa Lizama came in third in the men\u2019s and women\u2019s divisions, respectively. <\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough we didn\u2019t get the results that we wanted competition wise, we learned quite a bit in competition planning, organization and logistics and that in itself was the main goal of hosting the Marianas Cup again. The data we\u2019ve gathered is an important tool we\u2019ll use to fine tune everything before the Mini Games. I am grateful to the NMPMG2022 team for giving us this opportunity to host a great tournament and learn from it to ensure that the beach volleyball event at the NMPMG 2022 is an even better and bigger success,\u201d said Quan.<\/p>\n

A total of 22 teams\u2014evenly split among the men and women\u2014took part in the 25th Marianas Cup: Battle of the Beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Northern Mariana Islands Volleyball Association passed its \u201ctest run\u201d for the Northern Marianas Pacific Mini…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":367136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[17845,1845,133,492],"class_list":["post-367139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-mini-games","tag-nmiva","tag-run","tag-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367139","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=367139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}