While the official start of the new season is still more than a month away, the Northern Marianas Islands Football (Soccer) Association is ahead of its predecessor by acquiring the tools of the trade for the next generation of midfielders and sweepers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have goals and nets for each division. Let\u2019s say we have four teams, there will be two sets of goals and nets for each of those teams to play simultaneously, and we\u2019ve got them for 6-and-under, 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 (age groups), so we\u2019re fully set with those,\u201d said NMIFA secretary Peter Coleman.<\/p>\n
The players will also be flashing more than just their colors on the field as the league will be outfitting the kids with proper protection this time around.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to go with the uniforms similar to last year\u2019s uniforms. We\u2019re getting a bunch of shin guards come in and goalie gloves\u2014we\u2019ve got all of the equipment this year. It\u2019s the first time ever for the CNMI as far as I know,\u201d said Coleman.<\/p>\n
The league will play all of its games and practices at the American Memorial Park, but according to Coleman, NMIFA has designs on eventually moving to a location specifically groomed and maintained for soccer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to start there, but we are actively trying to get plans to build a permanent soccer pitch somewhere on the island. We\u2019re trying to get the league up and running first, but that\u2019s our next goal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While the official start of the new season is still more than a month away, the Northern Marianas Islands Football (Soccer) Association is ahead of its predecessor by acquiring the tools of the trade for the next generation of midfielders and sweepers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92898","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}