Basketballers take gold in C.A. Games
Today, twelve Belizean basketball players, now gold medallists of the Central American Games, returned home tired but elated. Their final victory was hard won, against the top seeded team of the tournament, Costa Rica. Final score: seventy, sixty-five. News 5 caught up with the athletes this afternoon at the City Centre.
Keith Acosta
“It was overwhelming knowing that we were in Guatemala and we didn’t know really know what the reaction of the fans would have been. But we just went out there and played hard and after the final buzzer sound, there was joy on everybody’s face.”
Janelle Chanona
“So you know how to say congratulations in Spanish now?”
Keith Acosta
(Laughs) “No, not as yet.”
Kevin Siroki
“We lost once, that was to Costa Rica, and we learned. The referees let us play and these guys, Darwin, Sonny, Alex, Keith, everybody stepping up and play their game. If you watch the game tape, it’s a battle. People beat each other up and referees let you play, so that helped us a lot. We played a lot of full court, man to man. Mark Bainton played really well for us and I think we won because we were the best team overall from top to bottom. A lot of teams didn’t have subs, we subbed everybody, everybody played for us, that’s why we won the game.”
Mark Bainton
“I decided I had to go on the court and play defence because out there there’s a lot of shooters, so you have to play hard on your man. I just decided to go out and play hard defence all games, whole games, every game.”
Roger Favela
“The motivation was high. In these tournaments, it’s hard to beat a team two times in a row, so automatically the pressure was on them. We also didn’t play very well when we played Costa Rica the first time, the coach was trying to fill in who should play, who shouldn’t play, so he was kinda getting everyone’s feet wet and in the championship game we put it all together.”
Kevin Siroki
“The Guatemalans, they treat us like gold. The people there were very nice to us, to everybody. Everyone was talking about this and that about the politics and that they don’t like us, but they treated us like gold and I can’t thank them enough for how much they did for us. I think we had more fans at the games than anybody else. They were rooting for us.”
And while we get the distinct impression those medals won’t be coming off anytime soon, there’s no denying these guys have earned bragging rights and a good night’s rest.
