{"id":371791,"date":"2022-07-05T06:01:53","date_gmt":"2022-07-04T20:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=371791"},"modified":"2022-07-05T06:01:53","modified_gmt":"2022-07-04T20:01:53","slug":"pickleball-inaugural-event-a-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/pickleball-inaugural-event-a-success\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Pickleball inaugural event a success\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Members of the Pickleball Federation of the Northern Mariana Islands pose for a photo with the five Guam pickleball players after their friendly matches last Saturday in their newly striped court at the American Memorial Park. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)
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The on and off downpour of rain during the weekend did not put a damper on the Pickleball Federation of the Northern Mariana Islands inaugural event last Saturday in the newly striped court at the American Memorial Park. <\/p>\n

Not only were CNMI pickleball players treated to a day of fun, barbecue, and friendly matches, there were five pickleball players from Guam who participated\u2014Derick Alcorn, Tomi Castillo, William Josler, Ronni Connelly, and Albert Kronix\u2014along with CNMI national tennis players Colin Sinclair, Robbie Schorr, and Colin Ramsay.<\/p>\n

PFNMI president Dr. Nelson Krum said about the event that he \u201cwas impressed with the number of players and spectators that attended!\u201d<\/p>\n

About 30 to 40 players participated during both the morning and evening games.<\/p>\n

The event held a round-robin format where Crazy 8\u2019s and King\u2019s Ransom were played in the morning and at night.<\/p>\n

Nicky Nichols, who is a member of the PFNMI board and is a pickleball player, was seen at the event and was interviewed about the sport. He said the sport is beneficial for older people or people who have injuries or are prone to injuries. <\/p>\n

However, he said the sport of pickleball is for people of any age. \u200b\u200bCurrently in their federation, there are players as young as 11 and as old as 74, but there are mostly 30- to 40-year-old players.<\/p>\n

Nichols added, \u201cWhat\u2019s nice about pickleball is that you can learn to play within one day easily. Within three games, you\u2019re playing at a level already where you\u2019re going to have fun playing. So, it\u2019s not a difficult game to learn. You don\u2019t chase the ball so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Nichols personally, he\u2019s taken up pickleball after being a tennis player for many years because it\u2019s \u201cfun.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a real social sport. We get four people on one court and look how close you are. You\u2019re talking while you play, laughing and making fun of each other. You have banter, you have people talking while you\u2019re playing. So, it\u2019s a very social sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

One player, Dave Guerrero, was seen having a friendly game with Shelly Tran, a new dentist from Paradise Dental who is a new pickleball player. They both said that it\u2019s a great sport to play. \u201cIt\u2019s a good, healthy, and fun sport. The age range brings everyone together\u2026 It\u2019s awesome. It\u2019s a fairly easy, fun sport to learn, it\u2019s addicting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The PFNMI encourages community members to try out the sport when they are out at the courts playing either during the day or at night. They provide the equipment such as the paddles, balls, and nets.
\n\u201cI think people can get really serious with the game, or just use our equipment and just come out and have fun. We have a lot of doctors from the ER playing with us and a lot of nurses.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you have any questions about the PFNMI, call or text Dr. Nelson Krum at 670-789-8201, or email @ nelsonkrum@msn.com. Let him know if you would like to be added to the Pickleball CNMI Group Chat on Whatsapp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The on and off downpour of rain during the weekend did not put a damper…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":371783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371791","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\/371791","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\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}