{"id":398435,"date":"2023-08-08T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=398435"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"No-11-are-MVPs-of-Marianas-Football-Cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/No-11-are-MVPs-of-Marianas-Football-Cup\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 11 are MVPs of Marianas Football Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although Team USA\u2014the Women\u2019s World Cup defending champions\u2014were bounced out of Round of the 16 yesterday, the NMI women\u2019s national team celebrated its third straight win in the Marianas Football Cup, while the NMI men\u2019s national team celebrated its first victory.<\/p>\n

Hence, one NMI U23 men\u2019s and women\u2019s national team player was announced the MVPs of the Marianas Football Cup 2023\u2014Markus Attao-Toves and Summer Manahane\u2014both sporting the No. 11 jersey, during the awards ceremony at the Northern Mariana Islands Soccer Training Center in Koblerville last Saturday.<\/p>\n

With a large crowd still in attendance even with a late-night finish to the two-day tourney against Guam, the 17-year-old MVPs received their trophies for their accomplishments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Manahane, a winger for the women\u2019s team who started off the momentum when she scored the first goal of the second game, said that she was not expecting the award.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel good and I was surprised. It\u2019s a team sport, obviously I couldn\u2019t have done it without my team.\u201d When asked why she was surprised, she said \u201cI feel like everyone worked hard and anyone could\u2019ve gotten it but I\u2019m happy it was me,\u201d said Manahane.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She then thanked her coaches, her team, and herself for the award.<\/p>\n

Attao-Toves, who is also a winger, scored the second goal for the men\u2019s team in their second game. He said about winning the award, \u201cI feel blessed. Like honestly, given an opportunity like this, I must take it. It can take me anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked how the tournament was for him, he said \u201cIt was great.\u201d With their games against Guam, he said \u201cFirst off, we wanted to see how they played in the first game, and then we noticed some stuff that we could do and added that to the second game.\u201d He then thanked his family and God for his award.<\/p>\n

As for the recap of the games from the team captain of the men\u2019s team, Jireh Yobech said \u201cIt’s tough because we knew nothing about the Guam team other than that they are young with a sprinkle of international-level players\u2014we didn\u2019t want to take them for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked how he felt about the NMI men\u2019s team finally winning the Cup, he said, \u201cIt was hard for me to hold back tears, to be honest\u2026 I’m the oldest on this team by some margin but seeing this team’s joy and the fight that they went through, it is amazing\u201d.<\/p>\n

NMI goalie Merrick Attao-Toves, Markus\u2019 brother, said that he\u2019s glad they won. \u201cOur defense was very strong\u2026 We worked hard and trained for this,\u201d he said. It was his first time playing in front of a large crowd and said that it got him motivated. \u201cIt made me realize how much [the game] meant also to them\u2014not just the soccer team\u2014but also to the whole island,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Luam Khen Koo, head coach for the women\u2019s team, said the tournament was a very good experience for the players. \u201cThe girls did very well. They deserve to be the champion because they trained very hard,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Koo added that with Guam\u2019s loss in the first game, he knew Guam would come back and play harder in the second game, so he said that they just had to keep possession of the ball as much as they could.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Dianne Pablo, captain for the women’s team, she said the win \u201cshowcased our hard work throughout the years. It\u2019s not just us\u2014it\u2019s the players on the bench, the coaches, and NMIFA as a whole. I\u2019m really proud of these girls for the two wins that we had.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old said that the strategy for their games, since they haven\u2019t played against Guam before, was to just play at their own pace and it worked out. When asked how they felt winning the championship, she said \u201cIt feels good. It\u2019s tiring but I feel like we\u2019re very, very proud of ourselves for all the hard work that we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Marianas Football Club 2023 matchup was the first since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The NMI men\u2019s team has never won the Cup since its inception in 2007, while the NMI women\u2019s team has won their third Cup in a row. It was also the first time NMI hosted the Cup since 2018.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Markus Attao-Toves, left is the men\u2019s MVP, while Summer Manahane is the women\u2019s MVP of the Marianas Football Cup 2023 in the awards ceremony after at the NMISTC in Koblerville.<\/p>\n

-CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
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Although Team USA\u2014the Women\u2019s World Cup defending champions\u2014were bounced out of Round of the 16…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398435","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=398435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}