NMIVA also sending teams to ’17 Games

Tyce Mister eyes the ball for a return during a game in the Northern Mariana Islands Volleyball Association-organized For the Love of volleyball tournament last February 2015 at the Hyatt Regency Saipan sand court. NMIVA is sending beach volleyball teams to the 2017 Mini Games in Vanuatu. (NMIVA Photo)

The Northern Mariana Islands Volleyball Association will also be sending delegates to the 2017 Pacific Mini Games set from Dec. 2 to 14 in Port Vila, Vanuatu.

NMIVA will be sending two-person teams in the men’s and women’s beach volleyball events and two coaches or officials for the two-week long sporting conclave to be hosted for the second time by Vanuatu.

NMIVA president Laurie Peterka informed Northern Marianas Sports Association president Michael A. White, through email, that they too would be competing in the 2017 Mini Games.

Athletics will have two male and two female runners with one coach, while golf will have a five-member men’s team and one coach bringing to 17—with six from NMIVA—the size of the CNMI delegation to the Vanuatu Mini Games.

The CNMI has no official golf federation and players are scattered in a number of groups like the Amigos Golf Club, CNMI Women’s Golf Association, FilTaga, Korean Golf Association, Marianas Golf Association, Refaluwasch Golf Association, and the Saipan Golfers Association.

Some RGA members represented the CNMI in last year’s Pacific Games in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

NMIVA, at first, was planning to send two teams from each division given the time frame of their preparation but the organizing committee of the 2017 Games set a limit of participants.

Peterka said that they would soon start with the tryouts for the two men’s and women’s teams that would don the CNMI colors in Vanuatu.

Next to be settled are the coaches or officials that would accompany both pairs as two of the certified mentors—Jeff Carlucci and Darcie Wylie—have already left Saipan with Codie Sayles set to leave either in June or earlier.

This leaves NMIVA with Kathy Winkfield, Russ Quinn, and Tyce Mister as the other coaches, but the former is set to give birth in May.

Last year, Andrew Johnson and Clay McCullough-Stearns represented the CNMI in the Port Moresby Pacific Games in Papua New Guinea with the young pair beating Tuvalu in the ranking round to finish eighth among 12 teams.

Football (soccer), tennis, and weightlifting are the other sports to be held in Vanuatu, which the CNMI has an existing federation or group.

The Northern Mariana Islands Football Association and Northern Mariana Islands Tennis Association will not be sending athletes, while weightlifting has been inactive since winning 12 medals in the 2014 Micronesian Games in Pohnpei.

Rugby, archery boxing, cricket, judo, karate, and netball are the other sports to be played in the 2017 competition.