7th annual International Day of University Sports held

With a new venue at the grassy area across the Student Center at the Northern Marianas College campus, the 7th Annual International Day of University Sports (IDUS) was held on Monday, Sept. 21, after some morning showers.

Students and community members came out to take part in a day of movement, from volleyball, spikeball, and also took part in some other activities and raffles.

Denise Myers, a teacher at NMC and board member of International University Sports Federation (FISU) Oceania, said that it’s the 10th IDUS worldwide, but the 7th in the CNMI. FISU, she said, is an organization that brings college and university students from around the world together to participate and compete in sports.

Having the IDUS for the 7th time in the CNMI, Myers said that “it’s great. Here at NMC I am Kineseology, Health & PE, in my hobbies, in my job—in every suit, just getting people out moving is really the goal.”

She added, “You don’t have to know how to play volleyball to come out, you don’t have to know how to play spikeball. Every year, it’s teaching what the sports are so that people can play. Playing and being active is way more fun than just exercising and being active, so anything that keeps people active in our community is great.”

As for their new location, with their previous events held at the Oleai Sports Complex, she said, “We changed to try and get more students. We’re trying to pull people that are just walking by… the rain was kind of a bummer for space. So we’ll see where we go with next year. It will probably be dependent on construction—as you know our campus has been under construction for a while. This space here, you actually couldn’t get to most years when they were building the student union. So now we have some space but I don’t know for how long because we have some buildings coming.”

The annual event is in collaboration with the NMI College Sports, FISU, and NMC.