{"id":381404,"date":"2022-12-12T06:02:34","date_gmt":"2022-12-11T20:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=381404"},"modified":"2022-12-12T06:02:34","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T20:02:34","slug":"all-is-not-lost-for-u18-national-baseball-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/all-is-not-lost-for-u18-national-baseball-team\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018All is not lost\u2019 for U18 National Baseball Team"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>
The 18 players of the CNMI U18 Junior National Baseball Team along with their team manager and coaches pose for a photo last month during one of their practices. (LEIGH GASES)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the Saipan Baseball League announced that the CNMI U18 Junior National Baseball Team\u2019s trip to Auckland, New Zealand for the World Baseball Softball Confederation Oceania qualifying tournament from Dec. 12 to 15 has been canceled, SBL president Jay Santos said that \u201call is not lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disappointing though it is that the team is not able to compete this time around, the team has a lot to look forward to next year as the SBL season may start in February and a tournament in Palau and South Korea is in the works.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re optimistic that we\u2019re going to have these guys play in the tournaments in Palau and Korea. We\u2019ll know hopefully sooner rather than later,\u201d said Santos.<\/p>\n

The team will also continue their practices, although at a reduced schedule of two times a week. \u201cThe coaches are going to give them a Christmas break, but they are going to continue to practice and get ready for the Saipan Baseball [League] season.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to when exactly the season will start, Santos said that they are working on it and that they \u201cwant to meet with all the prospective teams, coaches\u2026 hopefully by [the] first week of January there will be an announcement on that forthcoming as to what date\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

SBL announced the bad news to the team last Tuesday and that the reason they couldn\u2019t go was because \u201cthe funding did not become available until last week and we tried our [hardest] to book a flight. We were able to find a flight but the itinerary was just too much for the boys. We\u2019re talking [about] long layovers and\u2026 having to transit to two or three cities just to get to New Zealand\u2026 we thought it would be too taxing for the boys,\u201d Santos told Saipan Tribune last Friday.<\/p>\n

Santos added that \u201cit\u2019s just one of the things that are out of our hands\u2014we had no control over. It\u2019s not the end of the world. As much as these guys trained specifically for a competition, all it\u2019s done is really opened up opportunities for us, for other things to try to get our boys to compete in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charlie McDonald III, team captain of the national team, said \u201cworked hard for it\u2026 we deserved to go, but there\u2019s nothing we can do about it at this point. We\u2019re still going to keep training and trying our best whenever we go off-island, but yeah I\u2019m pretty disappointed\u2026 but there\u2019s nothing we can do about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U18 Junior National Baseball Team consists of team captain McDonald, Angelo Igitol Jeremiah Suel III, Noah Aguon, Joell Borja, Justin Camacho, Joey Dela Cruz Jr., Joel Deleon Guerrero, Derrence Diaz, Jon Diaz, Achilles Evangelista, Christopher Gonzales, Andre Iguel, Keahie Omapas, Benjamin Palacios, Jylon Sablan, Michael Tomokane, and Jesus Tyquiengco. The team manager is Joey Dela Cruz and the coaches are Manny Sablan, Mike Cruz, Jeremiah Suel, and John Peter Sablan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the Saipan Baseball League announced that the CNMI U18 Junior National Baseball Team\u2019s trip…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":381382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381404","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\/381404","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=381404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}