3 make NMSA April honor roll

Soccer’s Sunjoon Tenorio and Sharmaine Francisco and tennis’ Anthony Gregoire were named top athletes for the month of April during the Northern Mariana Sports Association meeting last Thursday at the conference room of the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium.

Gregoire and Tenorio shared the Tan Siu Lin Foundation/NMSA Male Student Athlete of the Month award, while Francisco took the same recognition handed to a female student athlete.

The junior tennis player got the nod of NMSA members for ruling the boys U14 singles event of the 2017 DFS-CNMI Junior Tennis Championships. Gregoire won in the finals against David Kwon, who defeated the former in their two previous meetings for the 2018-2019 season. In their third duel, Gregoire went back and forth against Kwon and survived an epic super-tiebreaker third set, 6-3, 2-6, 22-20. In the super-tiebreaker, the first to reach 10 points with a 2-point margin wins, but neither Gregoire or Kwon was willing to give in thus in took 45 minutes for the match to be decided in favor of the Saipan International School student. Gregoire completed the upset against Kwon after nearly three hours of action.

Meanwhile, Tenorio made it to the honor roll for leading MP United Football Club to a title defense in the boys U18 division of the 2019 NMIFA Spring Youth League.

Tenorio has scored 11 goals for MP United, which secured the division crown for the second straight time last week, as the squad kept its undefeated record (7-0-0 win-draw-loss) in the season. Tenorio and company bagged the U18 title with still one game left in their schedule (against the CNMI Boys U15 National Team next week).

Meanwhile, Francisco is also playing in the same youth league and her impressive performance helped Kanoa Football Club remain in contention for the girls U16 division championship.

The Marianas High School student is way ahead in the goals scored category with her 22 (excluding last Saturday’s match) and is likely to win this season’s Golden Boot award. Francisco is the lone player to have recorded at least 20 goals in the division, as second-ranked Keisha Deleon Guerrero of Southern United FC has only tallied 16.

With Francisco on target, Kanoa closed out April with a 6-1-1 record, just one win behind Southern United and still in the thick of the fight for the division crown. Francisco and her team played their penultimate match (versus MP United) last Saturday, while their crucial collision against Southern United will take place this Saturday.