How did Belize get the silver medal? BVA explains

By now you’ve seen or heard of the national female volleyball team. They made history last week in the Central American Volleyball Championships when they defeated Costa Rica – a team that had not lost a game in more than fifteen years. And then they went on to get the silver medal in the competition – losing out on the gold by a fraction of a point. And at that awards ceremony three of Belize’s players went on to receive individual recognition, including Shericka Burton who took home two awards – but missed out on the MVP title. Sharp said that a committee selected the MVP from the winning team, despite Burton having the highest scores. Today, the President of the Volleyball Association called a press brief to discuss some matters with the media, including costs and results of the game. But before we get into just how much it costs the association to prepare the team and host the game – here’s President Sharp’s explanation on why Belize picked up the silver medal at the games, despite an impressive showing.

Allan Sharp, President, Belize Volleyball Association

Allan Sharp

“At the end of the tournament, we had one loss to El Salvador. Costa Rica had one loss to us and El Salvador had one loss to Costa Rica. So, we were all tied in win loss record which was the first criteria to decide. The second criteria is how many points have you have earned from your win loss record and the way that this area of the world does it, is that you get five points when you win three sets to zero, four points if you win three sets to one, two points if you win three sets to two and right down the line. And therein again we were tied with Costa Rica. We were now ahead of El Salvador who had fifteen points, but Belize and Costa Rica both had eighteen points and so then it had to go in our region they do what is called the point ratio. So, you had to take all the points you have made, all the points for it is called and then you divide that by all the points scored against you. So, in the case of Costa Rica, they had four hundred and fifty points they had scored, three hundred and fifty points against. While Belize had four hundred and eighty-six points for but four hundred and fifteen against. So, when you do the ratio, we, by the smallest amount you can think about, they ended up with a ratio of about one point two seven to our one point one seven. So, basically, we miss the goal by point one of a point in ratio or you can say one set, had we done one set.”