Belize Wins Gold in COCABA Men’s Volleyball Tournament
The Belize Male National Volleyball Team wins the Copa Cancun 2016 Tournament. Over the weekend, three teams from Belize, including the MOEN Stars female team and the UB Black Jaguars travelled to Mexico to participate in the tournament. After several rounds of competition, the Belize Male National Team walked away as the champions, beating out the Mexican Team, Ejercito. News Five spoke today with team captain, Karym Coleman about the strategy to capture the regional volleyball title.
Karym Coleman, Captain, Belize National Volleyball Team
“We traveled on Friday may twentieth and we go there about midday. So we were preparing from the games from about January because we have a tournament coming up in August, the Men’s Qualifiers that are going to be held right here in Belize actually. So we’ve been training for that for a while so we were quite ready for this tournament. The tournament for us began on Saturday morning, but it was quite a formidable competition because most of those guys had been together for quite some years unlike us who had been training for only some months. But we put in the hard work and in the end it all paid off for us.”
Duane Moody
“Talk to us about the strategy that you guys used in the tournament to come out on top.”
Karym Coleman
Karym Coleman
“Well the strategy was pretty much just to adapt as we go along because we are not used to playing against those kinds of people. They play pretty fast-pace volleyball while in Belize, we are used to a quite higher more delayed sets because we can jump and we use that to our ability. But we got out there; we adapted, did as our coaches said and came out on top.”
Duane Moody
“I understand that there were two other teams from Belize that went out along with you guys to participate in the tournament.”
Karym Coleman
“Yes there was the Belize Black Jaguars, the UB guys, and the MOEN Stars. They did very well as well. They placed around third or fourth—they got knocked out in the semis—but they played some very strong volleyball as we all know that they can. For us it was pretty much just a practice exercise because we are using it as preparation for the big tournament that is coming up here in August and we had some of the Under-twenty-three guys with us that have a tournament coming up themselves like two weeks before our tournament. So for us, it was pretty much to prepare for something greater.”
Duane Moody
“Did you guys expect to win?”
Karym Coleman
“That was the goal, we went there to win. We went there for the experience, but we also wanted to win. No one likes to go out and win second.”
According to Coleman, training continues with their Cuban Coach as the team prepares for the World Championship Qualification Tournament which, for the first time, will be hosted in Belize from August twelfth to the twenty-first, 2016.
