Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association president Steven Lim credited the Saipan delegation\u2019s 19-17 win over Tinian during last weekend\u2019s 7th CNMI Goodwill Table Tennis Tournament to his players\u2019 renewed dedication to training.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly, it [increase training] is something that the Saipan players are crediting the success to, the fact that they have increased their training time from just two sessions of two- to three-hour workouts a week, to three sessions a week. We eventually plan to increase the variety of training that the players are doing, at least on Saipan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Although, he praised his players for the improvement in their skills, Lim stopped short of saying that Saipan has finally caught up with their counterparts across the channel as witnessed by the outcome of two-day tournament held at Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino\u2019s spacious ballroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that the tide has turned completely on Saipan\u2019s favor. It was a closely fought tournament, which could have gone once again in Tinian\u2019s favor should Lady Luck have chosen to side with them,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Lim said the tournament results would\u2019ve gone either way and had Saipan No. 3 Budhi Gurung lost to Bright Liu in the 36th and final match, the tournament would have ended in an 18-18 tie.<\/p>\n
The MATTA president also thanked TDHC for once again playing perfect hosts to the Saipan delegation, which further underscored the true friendly nature of the tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe TDHC staff, especially our opposite numbers, were as always, gracious hosts, who truly make the competition one of goodwill,\u201d Lim said.<\/p>\n
As for future plans to include the other two inhabited islands of the Marianas Chain\u2014Rota and Guam\u2014Lim remains hopeful of one day organizing such a tournament for table tennis.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of focusing on just the ongoing training from the two neighboring islands, I would like to hear that there would also be a group of enthusiasts who would be dedicated or even devoted to playing and training in the sport on Rota, where we have not heard much activity from. A three-way tournament or even four-way with Guam would truly be fun,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After finishing on the shorter end of the stick the previous six goodwill tournaments, Saipan finally defeated Tinian over the weekend. <\/p>\n
Saipan\u2019s Su Yong Dong also became the first player from the island to top the singles competition after the Seaman\u2019s Restaurant owner went undefeated in six games. Gurung finished fourth overall with a 4-2 record, followed by Chen Lin Ying (3-3), Mario Espeleta (3-3), Con Pobre (3-3), and Lim (0-6).<\/p>\n
Luke Lu was Tinian\u2019s performer and lost only to Su to wound up with a 5-1 record. Charlie Cheng was third overall after going 4-2, while Liang Wei Bin (3-3), Robin Lu (2-4), Liu (2-4), and Alfred Yue (1-5) make up the rest of the Tinian squad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association president Steven Lim credited the Saipan delegation\u2019s 19-17 win over Tinian during last weekend\u2019s 7th CNMI Goodwill Table Tennis Tournament to his players\u2019 renewed dedication to training.<\/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-99512","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\/99512","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=99512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}