Little League wraps up 2008 season

The Saipan Little League Baseball Association finally closed its curtains to the 2008 season with an awards ceremony held last July 12 at the pavilion behind the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium.

The event, which saw SLLBA fete champions in the Major, Junior, Senior, and Big Leagues as well as the individual winners of the MVPs and statistical category races, came almost two months after all four age group finals were concluded.

However, the SLLBA had good reason to postpone the award ceremony, as Saipan hosted the 2008 Asia-Pacific Regional Little League Tournament in the three older age groups recently.

In other sports news last week, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. did what Advance X-Terminators failed to do last Thursday when the power went off at the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium and stalled Ol’Aces’ march to the championship of the Inaugural FMI Inter-Color Basketball League.

At the time the islands’ much maligned utility turned off the juice at the Oleai Sports Complex, the Oleai team was comfortably ahead, 109-96, at the 3:30 mark of the fourth and final quarter in Game 3 of the teams’ best-of-three championship series.

Last week also saw CNMI bet R.J. Macaranas falling out of contention in the boys’ 9-10 division of the 2008 Callaway Golf Junior World Golf Championship after putting up a monster number at Torrey Pines Wednesday (Tuesday in California). Macaranas finished with a 15 over par 77 after finishing eight-over par in the eventful third hole.

Tsunami Swimming Center Saipan’s standout Kensuke Kimura, meanwhile, recently returned from three weeks of hard training in Guam. Kimura flew to the U.S. territory last month to join Tsunami Guam practices for its swimmers that will be taking part in the 2008 Junior Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.

Students from the former Soviet Union also took part in the 2008 PTI Aqua Walk held last July 12 in the waters off the Aquarius Beach Tower Hotel in Chalan Kanoa.

While the annual event kicked off at around 7:30am, the local walking group waited for 10 Russian students and two of their teachers to join the Aqua Walk a couple of hours later.

Buoyed by the presence of company president and CEO Ricardo Delgado, PTI rallied to beat defending champion Autonomous, 95-88, last Wednesday in the continuation of the 2008 PTI Inter-Government Business Basketball League.

In basketball across the channel, Finance/Shipping advanced to face Casino Department in the finals of the 7th Annual Tinian Dynasty Hotel & Casino Inter-Departmental Basketball League after beating F&B Service in a no-contest last week.