The CNMI Little League Senior All Stars who won last month’s regional tournament in Jakarta Indonesia left at 6 a.m. and are scheduled to arrive at Bangor at 2 p.m. They will stop over in Japan and Detroit.
This competition is set to take place for 10 straight days. The players’ ages are from 15-17 years old, there are 16 players and 3 coaches.
The chaperones who will accompany the NMI team are Tony Leon Guerrero, head coach, and Lawrence Dikito the assistant head coach. Some of the parents of the players will leave on Sunday to support their children.
The team’s manager has had many experiences with the baseball. Playing since he was 4 years old, he was in the team that represented the NMI in the World Series in 2001. In 2010 he agreed to be the manager this year.
According to the team’s manager, he’s feeling confident and not worried for the up coming World Series. He has put his faith and trust on the team’s skills and would like to remind them to do their best and never forget to have fun in the game.
Dikito who also represented the NMI in the World Series in 2008 is now a coach for our Major League team.
Last year’s Asia pacific, the NMI team lost to the Philippines by one point. This year’s Asia Pacific games however, with last year’s sour taste of defeat in their mouths, the NMI team won all of their games.
According to the national team’s manager, the Asia Pacific games was hard because all of the teams that they went up against were very competitive.
For the Championship round that won them their tickets to Bangor Maine, the NMI team was pegged up against team Guam and trumped them by 4 runs, 8-4.
The NMI team practiced from Monday to Friday starting at 10 AM all the way until 2PM.
Usually our national team run in the morning, followed by a combination of stretches, they then practice their batting, fielding techniques, and finally they enter the batting cage to practice with the pitching machines. Once in awhile when the coaches want the players to rest and have fun they let the players go against each other. The team’s players with their assigned positions are as follows:
Catcher Jesse Yamagishi Marvin Ngeskabei
1st base Richard Dela Cruz and Nathan Guerrero
2nd base Diego Camacho and Kevin Villagomez
Right field Leonard Sablan and Jeremy Lizama
Center field Joe Palacios and Garret Duenas
Left fielder is Ricardo Camacho Gregorio Izikawa
3rd base Zachary Aldan and Harry Nakamura
Short stop is Recardo Dela Cruz.
There will be no official umpire escorting the national team; rather the league will provide them one in Bangor, Maine as soon as they get there and register in.
When the team gets back however, the manager will start toning and training the little league team.
