Basketball teams sought for Marianas Village Cup

One of the teams participating in the Marianas Village Cup 2009 will be provided with this free jersey designed with Kagman flag. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

The Northern Mariana Islands Basketball Federation and Tan Holdings are teaming up in hosting a new basketball competition dubbed as Marianas Village Cup 2022.

Tournament commissioner and NMIBF director Irish Pagarao said the Marianas Village Cup will feature games in the boys U18 division and women’s open and they are looking at opening the competition in the first week of October. The NMIBF will run the tournament with Tan Holdings as sponsor, as the event is part of the several sports competitions that the company is supporting in celebration of its 50th anniversary this year.

Organizers are looking at 12 teams in the boys U18 division and six in the women’s open. After signing up, each squad will randomly pick (via raffle drawing) the village team name it will be carrying. Teams will also receive free jerseys, which feature the flags of each village that were unveiled through the Marianas Village Pride project of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers in June.

“For now, we will be assigning village names to each team. However, we hope that this tournament will help encourage village leaders, coaches, and other stakeholders to form and support their own village team in the near future so we can have a competition similar to the inter-village league before,” Pagarao added.

NMIBF president James Lee added that the Marianas Village Cup will be a good venue to identify talents and for NMIBF-member clubs to start engaging potential village partners.

“We are excited to include the Marianas Village Cup to our calendar of events this year as part of our continued efforts in encouraging stakeholders in villages to take part in promoting and supporting sports programs for residents, particularly our youth. We started with “Bola” by going to villages to conduct clinics and now we partner with Tan Holdings for the Marianas Village Cup, which in the future we hope to have games in the outdoor courts of the different villages in the NMI,” Lee said.

Matches in the inaugural Marianas Village Cup will be played every Saturday and Sunday only at the TSL Sports Complex to give way to the interscholastic league games scheduled on weekdays.

Meanwhile, Merlie Tolentino, executive director of the Tan Siu Lin Foundation—the charity arm of Tan Holdings—said the company is pleased to support the Marianas Village Cup and its concept of having teams named after villages in the NMI to promote the identity of each village.

To register or for more information about the Marianas Village Cup, contact Pagarao at 670-285-1138 or send email to Pagarao11@yahoo.com. For announcements and other details about the Marianas Village Cup, please visit the NMIBF Facebook page NMIBasketballFederation and Instagram at nmibasketball. (PR)