Belize shoots to regain basketball glory

Since winning the CariCom Championship in 1998 Belize’s stature in international basketball has been on a downhill slide. That situation will hopefully be reversed when a newly selected national team will take to the City Centre court on May second and third against Mexico. The four game home and away series is prequalifier for what could be a long run for fame and glory. Brads Neal is Vice President of the Belize Basketball Federation.

Brads Neal, V.P. Belize Basketball Federation
?The significance of these games is for us to get to Central Basket, which is another qualifying tournament in the Olympic Cycle, hopefully get to Beijing, China 2008?

?The next tournament is that we?re looking for two spots to qualify for Central Basket. Of the four teams that seat one and two in the two brackets, we?re going to play home and away games depending on the seating. Seat one plays seat two in the opposite brackets. The winner of that automatically get their bid to Central Basket.?

Stewart Krohn
?Assuming we do well, when we get to Central Basket, then what happens??

Brads Neal
?We play in that tournament to qualify for three spots that goes to the Champion of the Americas which is next year tournament 2007.?

Stewart Krohn
?And after that??

Brads Neal
?We try to get to Beijing China which is the Olympics, very simple.?

Stewart Krohn
?So what you?re saying Brads in a nutshell is that a journey of a thousand miles, or in this case eight thousand miles begins with that first step, and the first step is Tuesday night, May second at the City Centre against Mexico.?

Brads Neal
?That?s exactly what it takes. But we need the fans to come out. With the fans participation, I guarantee you, we?re going to do well.?

How well was explained by B.B.F. President Fred Garcia who was asked whether Belize will be going with the best possible team.

Fred Garcia, President, Belize Basketball Federation
?We will, with what we have coming in?like we mentioned before in the meeting, we have five guys coming in from abroad; some of them fairly new, some of them we know. And with the other seven, six, seven guys that are local, who are locally based here, we should have a pretty good team.?

Stewart Krohn
?One of the big problems in international basketball has been that our team has hurry come up, they don?t get a chance to practice together, they tend to do the practicing out in the early games of the tournament.; are things going to be any different this time around??

Fred Garcia
?Well with the situation that came up with the meeting in Mexico, in Guatemala, whereby they pushed the tournament up rather than having it on May fifth, which was when it was originally intended for has certainly hurt us, we will have about five days to get the team ready. But the guys, most of these guys have been with us for a while, they understand the game at the international level, Coach Siroki understands what he needs to do and we?re confident that we will get it together within five days. It would have been nice to have them for two weeks, which we had originally budgeted for, but unfortunately we?ll take five days and we go with that.?

The five imports are Darwin Carter, Sonny Watson, Kenton Paulino, Richard Troyer, and Leboise Gladden. Milt Palacio and Egbert Cherrington are expected to become available for later stages of Belize’s Olympic bid. The two games on May second and third will be broadcast live in a joint effort by Channels Five and Seven.