Guam missed in goodwill tourney

Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association president Steven Lim said he felt sorry Guam wasn’t able to participate in last weekend’s 2004 Marianas Friendship Table Tennis Tournament.

The Ateneo De Manila University graduate said the last-minute cancellation of Guam was unfortunate and that the goodwill ping-pong tournament would have been a far more complete and pleasant experience for Saipan and Tinian participants if Guam players were able to attend.

“The participation of players from the Guam Table Tennis Association in the recent tournament was certainly missed. There were a lot of factors involved in their pulling out at the last minute,” he said.

According to reports, GTTA cancelled their trip to Saipan after some of their younger and more skilled ping-pong players begged off because of previous engagements. That left the association with only a handful of players who did not want to put up just a token effort against Saipan and Tinian.

Despite the setback, Lim said MATTA is still open to host a table tennis tournament between three of the four main islands in the Marianas chain.

“Guam is truly—and geographically—part of the Marianas and their players are always welcome to participate in similar events in the future.

Lim said GTTA president Ed Pabalinas has already extended his apologies for the last-minute withdrawal of the association. He also said that Pabalinas has also offered a lot of suggestions for future collaboration between MATTA and GTTA.

“Cooperation is always a good things for the development of sports in these small population nations,” said Lim.

With regards to the venue, Lim said the Northern Marianas College was a perfect site for the goodwill tournament. Although ventilation was a bit of a problem, the MATTA president said they were able to set up a couple of barriers or surrounds to accommodate two ping-pong tables.

It turned out Lim and MATTA only needed one table because of the last-minute withdrawal of Guam.

“Our tournament took practically two days, basically playing on just one table because the players wanted to be spectators as well. That was a rate of about 25 games a day over seven hours, with ample time for players to recover their energy between matches,” he said.

Lim too was quite pleased with the awards banquet held at the Iron Chef Restaurant Sunday evening after the matches. It also helped that MATTA’s very own Su Yong Dong owned or partly-owned the Garapan restaurant.

According to Lim, Tinian, represented by players from the Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino, was quite impressed with MATTA’s hospitality despite once again losing their head-to-head encounter for the fourth straight time.

As a recap, Tinian defeated Saipan in the two-day table tennis tournament by the widest of margins. Tinian players drubbed the hosts 17-8 on Sunday before reasserting their dominance in the second day, 16-8, to finish with a 33-16 record against Saipan.