The Belize Volleyball Association is getting ready to host the 20th Edition of the Women's Central American Volleyball Championship.
It's a 7-day international tournament where national teams from all over Central America, including Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama will all converge at the Belize Civic Center, starting on Saturday. The Volleyball Association is promising that local fans of the sport will get to see it played at the highest level in this region.
The Association says that the Belizean athletes have been training hard for months, and they are as prepared as they can be for this tournament.
This evening, the BVA's president, and the national team hosted a press conference to convince you why they need your support at the Civic for the Team Belize for the home court advantage. Here's what the President had to say:
Allan Sharpe - President, BVA
"As part of the regional sport responsibility we are required to host almost annually an international tournament. This year it is the Central American Women's championship that we're hosting. As you may recall last year we did the under 20 and the year before was the World Championship qualifier in men and next year it's the Central American Beach Championship that we're supposed to host. Our team has been training since the end of last August, 11 months ago, almost 11 full months of training. We went to the Managua games, we returned and increased the level of training, we increased the amount of coaches, we increased the amount of weights, we increased the amount of track, we increased everywhere. I can tell you that this tournament will not be high school like, this will not be primary school like, this is women's volleyball, the girls will be hitting hard - Nel, Sherika, Shantel, Marissa, when they hit the ball I think even the boys show a lot of respect. As part of the training, we used the males from past national team as well as some males from the junior and youth national team to play against the women at women's height net. So the women are being put under a lot of pressure and stress to try and raise their level and with every week we have seen a major improvement. We have 6 teams playing over the 5 days starting on Saturday August 4th. Belize will be playing 7:30 every night from the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th. We play first match against El Salvador, then Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Guatemala. We have 3 matches per day, matches start at 3 PM every, 5 PM and then of course Belize closes out the night."
The tournament runs from the 4th to the 10th of August. Team Belize will play all the late games, which start at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, when they will go up against El Salvador. Then, on Sunday, they will go up against Panama, and on Monday, they will play Nicaragua. On Tuesday Night, Team Belize challenges Costa Rica, and on Wednesday, August 8, Belize plays its final game against Guatemala.
Email
Print