{"id":396259,"date":"2023-07-19T06:02:23","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T20:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=396259"},"modified":"2023-07-19T06:02:23","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T20:02:23","slug":"about-100-join-3rd-cnmi-disability-sports-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/about-100-join-3rd-cnmi-disability-sports-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"About 100 join 3rd CNMI Disability Sports Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>
Participants play cornhole during the 2023 CNMI Disability Sports Festival on Saipan, which was held last Friday at the Marianas High School Gymnasium. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

About 100 community members took part in the 2023 CNMI Disability Sports Festival on Saipan, which was held last Friday at the Marianas High School Gymnasium.<\/p>\n

The participants played a variety of physical activities such as cornhole, boccia, washer toss, sitting volleyball, and disc golf from 9am to 11:30pm.<\/p>\n

It was led by co-chairs Center for Living Independently executive director Susan Satur and Public School System Athletics Program director Nick Gross.<\/p>\n

The sports fest\u2019s purpose was to provide recreational play opportunities and socialization for people with disabilities within the community\u2014from the elementary school students to the elderly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gross, for his part, said after the festivities that \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of different people coming together to provide a program that really does give opportunities for all throughout the CNMI\u2014and what we\u2019re doing here is really highlighting inclusive leisure activities that any family, any function, any school can do to ensure that they truly are inclusive activities and that everybody in our community can come together and enjoy sport together.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cIt\u2019s been a long time coming\u2026 We\u2019re really happy to have it back up again and have it as an annual event. We want to have this possibly every quarter or twice a year because it\u2019s that important and everybody that participated loves the event.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Greg Borja, executive director of Northern Marianas Protection and Advocacy Systems, Inc., said on the importance of having the event, \u201cI feel the importance of holding a disabilities sports fest is to provide opportunities for people who don\u2019t get a chance to come out and do any activities. That way, they can celebrate with their peers in terms of playing games, laughing, and just having a good time is what it\u2019s really all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Borja said that participants from the Center for Living Independently shared that they\u2019re thankful that the sports fest came back again and that they were happy because they\u2019ve missed it. \u201cIt is an opportunity that they don\u2019t really get throughout the year other than when we try to provide these events for them,\u201d said Borja.<\/p>\n

According to Borja, after the 2020 census, there are roughly about 3,500 people on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota with disabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Disability Network Partners are the Tan Siu Lin Foundation, CNMI PSS, Northern Marianas Protection & Advocacy System Inc., Division of Youth Services, Northern Marianas College, Commonwealth Transit Authority, Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., CNMI Council on Developmental Disabilities, Center for Living Independently, and the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

The sports festival was first held in 2018 and returned for the first time after a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.\u00a0
\nThe sports festival will be held on Tinian this Friday, July 21, while the event on Rota will be held on July 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About 100 community members took part in the 2023 CNMI Disability Sports Festival on Saipan,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":396260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396259","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\/396259","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=396259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}