NMI ready to host U21 baseball tourney

Saipan Baseball League president Rose Igitol said the CNMI is ready and more than willing to host the 2015 Baseball Confederation of Oceania Under-21 tournament.

“We have not hosted an international baseball tournament for quite some time. And we want to submit a bid to BCO for hosting the event,” Igitol, who was elected as one of the three BCO executive members, told Saipan Tribune.

SBL coordinator and Northern Marianas Sports Association executive director Tony Rogolifoi said, in an earlier interview, that he wants to bring the U21 tournament at the Francisco M. “Tan Ko” Palaciso ball field.

The BCO executive board is set to issue a letter of invitation to bid for the U21 tournament to all of its member federations.

“We want to bid. We will bid for the hosting rights. We are more than ready to do it. SBL coordinator Tony Rogolifoi is very excited for it,” added Igitol.

Igitol said that Guam would be supporting the CNMI’s bid to bring the U21 tournament to Saipan. “We have a good chance of getting the hosting rights. Guam would not bid if the CNMI would submit a bid.”

If ever Saipan is given the hosting rights, countries like American Samoa, Australia, Cook Islands, FSM, Fiji, Guam, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, and Solomon Islands are expected to compete.

“We are more than willing to host them so they could get a chance to see Saipan and get to know our local culture,” said Rogolifoi, who helped guide Team CNMI to gold medals in the 2006 Micronesian Games and the 2011 Pacific Games in New Caledonia.

Igitol added getting to host the U21 tournament, tentatively set in late December or early January in 2016, would prepare Saipan for next year’s inaugural Micronesian Baseball Classic.

“If we do get the hosting rights. It would be a good preparation for next year’s MBC. It would be a stepping stone in organizing another major baseball tournament in 2016,” Igitol said.

The MBC, planned to be a biennial event where the hosting rights would rotate among members of the Micronesian region, is a brainchild of Rogolifoi, who brought up the idea in a meeting during the 2014 Micronesian Games in Pohnpeii last July.

Fiji’s Innoke Niubalavu and Palau’s Temmy Shmull join Igitol as BCO executive members where they will have a three-year term along with Guam’s Bob Steffy (president), New Caledonia’s Laurent Cassier (first vice president) American Samoa’s Victor Langkilde (second vice president), and Australia’s Chet Gray (secretary general).