On March 12, 2010 The Basketball Association of the Northern Mariana Islands (BANMI) recently received 4 large boxes containing over 100 basketballs earlier this year from FIBA Oceania prior to the arrival of Zone Development Officer Mr. Ryan Burns.

As part of BANMI's continous development efforts, President Elias Rangamar was pleased to see the large shipment of size 5, 6, & 7 rubber basketballs which will be distributed accordingly to schools and grassroots programs around the CNMI.

BANMI is thankful for the cooperative efforts and great support from FIBA Oceania to help pacific island basketball federations like us to reach out and promote and develop basketball, he said.

With this equipment, we can do our best to assist as many schools at the grassroots level and BANMI will be requesting for more from FIBA Oceania. This is one of the many duties of the federation that we're happy to carry out.

BANMI Officials were also pleased with the arrival of the donation which has been spread out to Rota and Tinian in the past couple of months.

Visiting Rota last year and recently Tinian was something we've looked at from a development standpoint. Our basketball families there spoke to us of their needs and this equipment is just some of the many things we've collaorated on to address such needs, said Gabriel White, President of the BANMI Referee's Association.