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Today Belize’s Under 12 basketball team returned from Guatemala City with their heads high and medals around their necks. The team won bronze in the Mini-Basketball Central American Championships. They went head to head with two teams each from Guatemala and Salvador and a team from Costa Rica. We won three out of the five games which gives us some regional bragging rights. And that’s why our team was at the City Center for the homecoming.

Sydney Bradley Jr., Team Member
“It was hard a little bit because we were playing against some hard people.”

Keith Swift,
But you still won three games. How does it feel to bring home a medal?

Sydney Bradley Jr.,
“Happy.”

Lisa Underwood, Mother of Sydney
“I am very proud of him and I hope he achieves more in the near future. Besides basketball and football he also plays volleyball at time, sometimes softball, he does drumming – he does a lot of things I can’t explain but my son is very talented and I am very proud of him.”

Andrew Vasquez, Team Member
“At the tryouts I did a lot of stuff I didn’t know to do but over the weeks I learnt how to do them.”

Keith Swift,
What was the competition like?

Andrew Vasquez,
“Cold and hard to breathe and hard to play.”

Keith Swift,
But you guys still won a few games and brought home medals. How does that feel?

Andrew Vasquez,
“Yeah we won a few games. It feels good.”

Paul Thompson, President – BBF
“We were moderately successful. We won three games of five. We had six teems; two teams from Guatemala, two teams from El Salvador, and Costa Rica, and Belize.”

Keith Swift,
So we did good.

Paul Thompson,
“I believe so. As I said I think we did moderately well. We put together this team a little over a month. The teams that beat us, you could tell easily that they were together for a year, maybe two years –they’ve been in some sort of a system. We don’t have a formal system here but the team that we put together we had so much talent, as we always say, we have talent but we need to put together a formal system.”

The last time Belize participated in a regional under 12 game was in 1979.