Guam badminton group to take cue from NMBA

The seven players from Guam National Badminton Federation pose for a photo during a break in the 2014 NMBA-GNBF Friendly Competition last Saturday at the TSL Sports Complex. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)

Guam National Badminton Federation was impressed with the big number of players under the wing of Northern Marianas Badminton Association and hopes to emulate NMBA’s membership growth in the next few years.

“It was amazing to see a lot of players packed in a gym,” GNBF general secretary Sunardi Li said in an interview with Saipan Tribune last Friday during the opening of the 2014 NMBA-GNBF Friendly Competition at the TSL Sports Complex.

NMBA has more than 150 players and the group continues to grow since introducing the club system for recruitment of players. It has five active clubs: Saipan Badminton Club, Shirley’s Badminton Club, Taga Badminton Club, Golden Racquets, and the Community Badminton Club, which is bannered by youth players. In the past years, NMBA even had two more clubs and this year more new players joined the group. Majority of the players showed up in the friendly competition and cheered for both federations.

“The club system is really working for NMBA and we hope we could do that, too in Guam so we can encourage more players,” said Li, who led a seven-player Guam delegation to the first Guam-NMBA friendly tournament that the latter hosted.

Li added that having competitions between Saipan and Guam players are beneficial to both federations as far as development of their players is concerned.

“We are able to gauge our players’ skills as we compete against players from Saipan. We know how much improvement we need to keep up with Saipan players. Saipan has very good players and a lot of young promising talents,” the GNBF official added.

Li also said having competitions like the NMBA-hosted weekend event will help each federation improve its ability to manage tournaments and prepare both NMBA and GNBF for hosting more and bigger events that will involved other groups.

“This is a very organized tournament and we would like to do the same when Saipan players come to Guam again. Thank you to NMBA, especially to its president, Mr. Jerry Tan,” Li said.
While last week was GNBF’s first time to send players to Saipan, the host had been to Guam three times and brought relatively the same group of players each occasion.

“This time, those players who could not go to Guam had a chance to play against our neighbors. It’s a good exposure to them, as they managed to gauge the level of play of the Guam players,” NMBA general secretary Merlie Tolentino said.

The weekend competition featured men’s singles, men’s doubles, and mixed doubles events with NMBA’s very own Ferdie Arago leading the winners list in the two-day tournament. Arago defeated Li in the men’s singles finals last Saturday, 21-11-21-17. NMBA’s Sam Jones and Glenn Bluutjens won the men’s doubles crown over Li and Angelo Lin, 21-18, 21-18 while the latter partnered with his wife Lykki in beating Saipan’s Hannah Choi and Andreau Galvez in the mixed doubles finals, 21-18, 12-21, 21-18.

Joining Li and the Lins in the tournament were David Yao, Paolo Gozum, and youth players John Conducto and Cloyd Rosas.