Organized by the Northern Mariana Island Volleyball Association, the Fall 2009 beach volley ball league drew over 70 young male and female players who signed up for the league.
This year’s teams are PWIPWISE, Saipan Southern High School 1, Saipan Southern High School 2, O-NO, Chenutt Crew, Git It, Fisingan, Just Do It, Random Radicals, Scotts Team, Angamwas and Special Delivery.
PWIPWISE and SSHS 2 will meet in the opening game at 5:30 p.m., today followed by O-NO versus SSHS 1 at 7:30 p.m., then Chenutt Crew against Git-It.
The players, according to NMIVA President Laurie Peterka rated themselves as advance, intermediate and beginner as they signed up in the draft banquet.
With 30 votes against 25 who wanted otherwise, the blind format prevailed in picking teams.
In this draw format, players were sorted by player level and then by male or female. The organizers gave each player a number then, pulled the top 10 men and made them team captains.
These team captains picked numbers starting with female-A players, the female-B players, and so on. Then, each team had seven players: four men and three women, except for team “O-No” which has four women and three men.
Peterka said the league committee is fantastically pleased with the turn out for this season.
She said they originally determined they would only allow 12 teams, which translates to 72 players. However, it was too hard to turn the last entrants away, so the committee took in a few more and made teams of seven instead of teams of six.
The NMIVA league committee consists of Peterka, Kelley Butcher, Bruce Berline, Jazz Rosokow, Robert Jordan, and Melody Matson.
The other NMIVA members who contributed to make this possible include Kim Peterson, Tyce Mister, and Linda Anastacio.
Peterka expressed gratitude to Pacific Islands Club Saipan and Pacific Trading Company who like in the past many years, are this season’s sponsors again.
