Volleyball team gets bronze medal and advances

The Belize Senior Women’s Volleyball Team returned on Monday from the World Championship Qualification Tournament, held in Panama City. And they didn’t come back empty handed; the team placed third and brought home the bronze trophy, a first for the country in female volleyball. According to the coach and President of the Belize Volleyball Association, Allan Sharp, the team didn’t do very well when it first participated in the qualification tournament in 2008, but the athletes have improved significantly and are now moving on to the second round of competition.

Allan Sharp, President, Belize Volleyball Association

Allan Sharp

“We are very pleased. We were one of the youngest teams in the competition. The team that won, which is Panama, had an average age of twenty-nine years old; we are far younger than that. So that shows a lot of promise for us. We have at least six months to get ready, we need of course a lot of support in getting ready, but we have a young group that did very well. Miss Jasmine Anderson won best Libero in the tournament—that’s the defensive specialist—so that was very good and we ranked second and third in almost every one of the categories. Our eighteen year old Miss Tichele Solis was very highly ranked in the most points and in spiking and attacking, she was also rated in many of the different sets. Shelmadine Cacho and Shantel Arnold were second and third in blocking. So we were very well ranked in all the different areas. Maybe because we’re so young, we lacked a bit of experience because we actually were the only team that put Panama under stress. It was very close, we had the opportunity of putting them down two-zero at home but between their experience and the crowd behind them they managed to pull it out at the last minute.”

Delahnie Bain

“So how many other countries were they going up against?”

Allan Sharp

“It was a total of four countries. They pick the top countries of Central America and then one country out of the Caribbean.”

Delahnie Bain

“So you said this was round one, do they move on in the competition?”

Allan Sharp

“Yes, the top three teams move on. It’s done in a points system and we ended up third in points so we won the bronze medal. It’s the first time females have won a medal in any international [volleyball] competition for Belize and it’s the first time that Belize is moving to another round in any qualification tournament, especially in female so it’s a big step for us.”

Sharp says the association and the team needs the support of the government and the general public as they prepare for the second round of competition. Practice matches against strong competitors are a must, according to Sharp, but they are costly to arrange so the association will be fundraising in the coming months. The next tournament will be held in 2013; the exact dates as well as the host country will be announced in January.