St. Mary’s Int’l School visits Saipan for soccer friendlies

A high school varsity boys soccer team from Japan’s St. Mary’s International School visited Saipan for three days of friendly matches, camaraderie, and an exchange of culture.

The Titans, led by head coach Geoff Chan and junior varsity coach Lucas Vinall, arrived last Sunday and left this morning after matches against three local teams.

The team, captained by Teiju Ajeesh, first took on Dove Women’s League’s Paire Football Club, then the boys high school champions Marianas High School—which the Titans won via penalties, 5-4, and wrapped up their stint yesterday against Saipan International School, 6-1.

With how this tourney came about, Chan said that their boys varsity team goes on a trip every year to engage in friendly matches, so they reached out to the Northern Mariana Islands Football Association.

“Every year the varsity team goes on a trip. Last year, they went to Singapore… We actually reached out to Guam’s Father Duenas, but it didn’t work out—they sort of took their time to get back to us, so we said we had to find somewhere else. Fortunately, we emailed the Northern Mariana Islands Football Association and they put us in touch with everybody here—the clubs and the schools,” he said.

Now that they’ve played in Saipan for the first time, Vinall said the key thing is to establish a connection with Saipan and their home. “We’ve tried to put some proper connections where hopefully we can bring the boys back year after year… They want to come back next year. Hopefully your schools and everyone will have us back, but we’ll happily come back and we’ll try to get our junior varsity team to come as well, so that will be about another 20 of us,” said Vinall.

As for their experience in Saipan, Vinall said, “It’s been fantastic. Everyone’s been so friendly, so welcoming. As soon as we arrived, the hotel staff picked us up and everyone that we’ve met—the students, the people that we’ve played against—everyone’s been fantastic.”

Asides from their matches, the team visited SIS and interacted with their students. Chan said, “We went there and had a presentation about our school and Japanese culture. We had games and prizes, and the kids did origami with us… and the boys learned ‘Hafa Adai’. We actually have a big choir, so some of our boys sang our graduation song for the children, so it was an absolutely fun day full of exchange of culture and friendship—it was absolutely wonderful.”

St. Mary’s is an all boys catholic school from K-12 in Setagaya in Tokyo with over 1,000 students.