When baseball first began to gain traction in Belize, the early founders of the association rounded up as many as 90 players to train at the time. That effort ultimately fizzled, but now the Belize Baseball Federation is making another attempt at bringing back the sport to schools by launching a pilot project. They held a handing over ceremony for the equipment needed today and here's what I found out about it.
All it takes is some equipment, a trained coach, and a place to play to get them started. It was once a popular sport in Belize, but now the Belize Baseball Federation is attempting to revive interest in the sport by piloting a project in 5 selected schools. At the handing over ceremony today their president gave us more details on their objectives.
Carolyn Flores, President, Belize Baseball Federation
"The pilot project, we wanted it to start with six schools right now. We have five schools who have signed on board and so we are giving them the starter packages. The purpose of the starter packages is for the coaches that will be planted at these different institutions to start to train the students. How it will work, we as the federation our responsibility will be to train coaches who will be coaching the students so for that to happen we are going to bring an  international coach, Coach Quan, from Curaçao he is a very good friend of mine, we don't travel a lot but we meet a lot when we travel and we speak a lot about the development of baseball in Belize so we are going to be bringing him in July, immediately after the Fort Myers trip, he will be coming into to Belize and then we will conduct that training. The training will be for coaches it will be for statisticians as well as umpires so this project is simply to develop the talents of the young people from the very foundational stages all the way to the level where they can display you know talent that is very watchable by the fans or audience who will be going to those games."
So once they are able to build the interest and fine tune the talent, this can also lead to other opportunities for not only Baseball in Belize, but also tourism. If the games are worth watching, people may even begin to travel to see them.
Josue Carballo, Chief Tourism Officer
"This is a very important step among many to be able to create new opportunities, one absolutely for the youths for the sporting world but even as it ties in to the tourism product in the past we have started a big study the tourism, a sports tourism strategy and when we look at global sports things like baseball, baseball is one of them that can eventually work right if we can partner up with the association and have it grow it is something that will eventually bring not only local  and national teams but be able to reach a level where we can international participation of different teams. So by putting the ministry's efforts together from the different subsections we can create products that will benefit both Belize nationally but also tourism wise but also international so it is quite an exciting venture when we see the private sector in this case getting involved and starting these associations."
The other schools, St Luke Methodist, Unity Presbyterian, St John's Vianney and St Ignatius Primary all received equipment along with St Martin De Porres. Their principal told us why they decided to be a part of this project.
Michelle Murray Gordon, Vice Principal, St Martin De Porres School
"We are very excited to have been selected as one of the recipient schools in the pilot project. We look forward to improving our physical education classes and well further developing the spirit of baseball within our school."
"Well our population is almost 600 so considering at what age they will start participating in the program that could give you an idea, at least 400 I would say if we start around 8 or 9 years old."
"Our kids are always interested in sports. They love PE and we are always short of equipment so this will make a big impact on their enthusiasm and their dedication to the sport."
| 