{"id":397798,"date":"2023-08-18T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-18T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=397798"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Antoni-Ogumoro-is-player-to-watch-by-college-football-scouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Antoni-Ogumoro-is-player-to-watch-by-college-football-scouts\/","title":{"rendered":"Antoni Ogumoro is player to watch by college football scouts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American football season is just around the corner but the high school football season is about to kick off tomorrow and a tall kid tracing his roots from a tiny island\u20146\u20196\u201d student-athlete Antoni Ogumoro\u2014is making waves in his athletic endeavors while still in high school.<\/p>\n

Son of former CNMI national basketball team member Ambrose Ogumoro and his wife, former CNMI national volleyball team member, Mayumi Aguon, Antoni is a multi-sport athlete who is on the watch list in his high school junior year by several NCAA Division I football programs.<\/p>\n

Antoni plays basketball and football but as of late has shifted his focus to football. The White Oak, North Carolina student played last season under the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) for Team United out of Charlotte, North Carolina until he made the transition to football.<\/p>\n

His father said, \u201cIf he\u2019s fortunate enough and if the same school recruits him to play basketball too, he\u2019ll go play for that school, but I\u2019d say his focus and attention currently is on football.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 16-year-old defensive lineman impressed many scouts after his father said they\u2019ve seen game film of him from last season. \u201cThey were impressed by what they\u2019ve seen and what his potential is in the coming years,\u201d said Ambrose.<\/p>\n

During the summer, Antoni was invited to college football camps and took advantage of the opportunity. Ambrose said, \u201cWe took advantage of [these] invitations this summer and he\u2019s done really well at all of them that they\u2019ve invited him back for a visit during the college football season so that he could experience a college gameday and feel out the school environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Antoni\u2019s high school sports career, Ambrose said so far it\u2019s been great. Antoni started out his freshman year playing on the varsity basketball team and earned his first start midway through the season, then transitioned to football during the fall season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Antoni, who has never played football before, caught on quickly. He played football his sophomore year and was selected to play on the varsity team as well and was named the starter for both offense at tight end and defense at defensive end.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From there, he led his team to their first Conference Championship Title in 22 years. Also last school year, Antoni led his basketball team to their first Conference Championship title in 21 years.<\/p>\n

For Ambrose, when asked what he sees for his son\u2019s future, he said \u201cI see a very bright future for my son in college sports just because I see how much he pours into the sports he plays and his passion to chase his dreams to play at the next level. Honestly, the only expectation my wife and I have for Antoni in college is to continue being that student-athlete where his studies come first before being an athlete. Without that education, eligibility to play that sport will be denied no matter how good of a player you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antoni Ogumoro\u2019s grandparents are Ambrosio Ogumoro and Felicidad Kaipat Ogumoro of Capital Hill and Rufino and Carol Aguon of Kagman. Rufino Aguon incidentally is Ambrose Ogumoro\u2019s former coach in the CNMI national basketball team.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

No. 9 Antoni Ogumoro in action during one of White Oak High School\u2019s football games.<\/p>\n

-CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
\n
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The American football season is just around the corner but the high school football season…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397798","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=397798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}