The Under 20 Central American Female Volleyball Championship to take place on Wednesday to Saturday of this week at the SCA Multipurpose Center.
It's a major international tournament and all 7 Central American nations will have teams participating.
Belize has never medalled in this tournament, but they have also never hosted it before. And that's why hopes are high for the girls with the homecourt advantage. The team captain told the media more at a press conference today:...
Allyana Musa, Belize Team Captain
"I believe all of us are really excited, especially since it's in our home country and we really just want to make Belize proud and we feel like we've trained hard enough to get a medal, especially gold. And we've been working hard and we hope to come out victorious and to just make our country proud."
Allan Sharp, Pres., Belize Volleyball Association
"Wednesday afternoon the first match starts at 3pm with an opening ceremony at 6:30. The format this time is quite different. It's the first time that Central America is trying this format. Normally each team only plays one match per day, which means only 3 matches per day are played and so the first day there are 3 matches and then Thursday, Friday and Saturday there is 6 matches per day. But to play a five setter both emotionally and physically twice is straining."
Delio Arrebarrena, Coach
"Obviously its very difficult, because you are using up a lot more energy to do two matches per day. With this in mind, there has had to be some changes in the training."
Allyana Musa, Belize Team Captain
"We've progressed throughout the training time and I believe we have a strong team and we will do really well in the tournament. I hope that we medal in this. We're hoping for gold and we will fight our hardest for it. I believe that we can do it."
Allan Sharp, Pres., Belize Volleyball Association
"The fans can make more than just an additional player. It's not only encouraging our team, but to see the home crowd. I can't think of any other Central American country that has the fans this close."
Allyana Musa, Belize Team Captain
"We will try our hardest to get a lot of supporters coming. We've open Instagram pages and we've asked a lot of people to come out and help us because it really does help getting the team hyped up and hearing from everybody else. It really does help us when we can't bring ourselves out of it."
All the teams will arrive tomorrow and have one day to work out at the SCA Gym before the first match is played on Wednesday afternoon at 3:00. Belize plays its first match against Honduras later Wednesday night.
A day pass to see all matches in any one day is ten dollars for adults and 5 dollars for children.
We should note that while the tournament is call an "under 20", really it's an under 18.
