‘All is not lost’ for U18 National Baseball Team

The 18 players of the CNMI U18 Junior National Baseball Team along with their team manager and coaches pose for a photo last month during one of their practices. (LEIGH GASES)

After the Saipan Baseball League announced that the CNMI U18 Junior National Baseball Team’s trip to Auckland, New Zealand for the World Baseball Softball Confederation Oceania qualifying tournament from Dec. 12 to 15 has been canceled, SBL president Jay Santos said that “all is not lost.”

Disappointing though it is that the team is not able to compete this time around, the team has a lot to look forward to next year as the SBL season may start in February and a tournament in Palau and South Korea is in the works.

“We’re optimistic that we’re going to have these guys play in the tournaments in Palau and Korea. We’ll know hopefully sooner rather than later,” said Santos.

The team will also continue their practices, although at a reduced schedule of two times a week. “The coaches are going to give them a Christmas break, but they are going to continue to practice and get ready for the Saipan Baseball [League] season.”

As to when exactly the season will start, Santos said that they are working on it and that they “want to meet with all the prospective teams, coaches… hopefully by [the] first week of January there will be an announcement on that forthcoming as to what date…”

SBL announced the bad news to the team last Tuesday and that the reason they couldn’t go was because “the funding did not become available until last week and we tried our [hardest] to book a flight. We were able to find a flight but the itinerary was just too much for the boys. We’re talking [about] long layovers and… having to transit to two or three cities just to get to New Zealand… we thought it would be too taxing for the boys,” Santos told Saipan Tribune last Friday.

Santos added that “it’s just one of the things that are out of our hands—we had no control over. It’s not the end of the world. As much as these guys trained specifically for a competition, all it’s done is really opened up opportunities for us, for other things to try to get our boys to compete in.”

Charlie McDonald III, team captain of the national team, said “worked hard for it… we deserved to go, but there’s nothing we can do about it at this point. We’re still going to keep training and trying our best whenever we go off-island, but yeah I’m pretty disappointed… but there’s nothing we can do about it.”

The U18 Junior National Baseball Team consists of team captain McDonald, Angelo Igitol Jeremiah Suel III, Noah Aguon, Joell Borja, Justin Camacho, Joey Dela Cruz Jr., Joel Deleon Guerrero, Derrence Diaz, Jon Diaz, Achilles Evangelista, Christopher Gonzales, Andre Iguel, Keahie Omapas, Benjamin Palacios, Jylon Sablan, Michael Tomokane, and Jesus Tyquiengco. The team manager is Joey Dela Cruz and the coaches are Manny Sablan, Mike Cruz, Jeremiah Suel, and John Peter Sablan.