| But Belize is a long way from competing in the Chess Olympiad - though Short doesn't believe it's impossible. And the executive of the Belize Chess Federation is already working on revamping and redeveloping the organization, especially since it's played by thousands of Belizeans across the country. They say you may not have heard of the federation yet, but you will pretty soon.
Steve Flowers, President, Belize Chess Federation
"The Chess Federation, to answer your question about why you haven't heard about us yet, is because it's something that's revamping, the past set of executives, it just kind of disseminated into… not nothing but just players playing casually around Belize and we're trying to get those players again and trying to start up something new with the help of our past sponsorships and just whoever would like to give a helping hand or whatever chess supporter and to add to that, I think it's worth mentioning, the Mexican players that came today, they're really giving us a really good hand and reaching out and we're extending our network so that's good, soon enough, we'll be playing in Mexico."
Joshua Baeza, VP, Belize Chess Federation
"Right now we have an active Facebook page, we're posting all the events, everything that's happening on Facebook, on the Facebook group Belize Chess Federation, I believe that's how it is on Facebook and amongst ourselves we just post it on our statuses, whether it be on WhatsApp or Instagram or our own Facebook pages and that's how we get to advertise the events of what's going on in the Federation."
Courtney Menzies:
"Do you find that it's a popular sport in Belize?"
Joshua Baeza, VP, Belize Chess Federation
"Amazingly, it is, the amount of players we've had in other tournaments, in the previous tournaments, is astounding. We used to have regional tournaments every year under previous administrations or previous presidents so when we used to get together, you would have over 100 players easily in each of the national tournaments, the regional tournaments you have less than fifty, around fifty, so then from those regional tournaments, we used to choose the players that we would send over to the national tournaments so it's basically a free flow between the districts that send players."
Short also mentioned that the federation will need as much support as it can get from the Ministry of Sports, and Minister Rodwell Ferguson was present at the tournament yesterday.
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