NORCECA is proud of number of WCHs Qualifiers in 2012

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, February 5, 2013 – The celebration of a total of sixteen first-round tournaments towards the 2014 FIVB World Championships to be held in Poland and Italy was considered by the president of NORCECA Confederation as the biggest achievement of the volleyball institution in last year.

“We feel very proud about attaining this huge goal as 64 teams took part in the first phase of qualification tournaments,” said Cristobal Marte Hoffiz. “That’s something we could not even imagine in the past.”

More than US$700,000 were invested in the eight women’s and eight men’s events that took place in 15 different countries of the four sub zones within NORCECA.

“As part of our development plan we started the qualification phase one year earlier than the rest of the confederations in order to present our National Federations Category I and II with more chances of competing,” Marte Hoffiz said.

The events were hosted in British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Curacao, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, French Saint Martin, Grenada, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia, Suriname and U.S. Virgin Islands.

From each of those four-team tournaments, the top three ranked sides advanced to the 2013 second-round tournaments which includes twelve events –six per gender.

“These tournaments left a valuable legacy in the hosting countries as we had the opportunity to organize workshops before the competitions and properly train the local people in the different aspects of running a volleyball event,” he added.

NORCECA Confederation registered the participation of 40 countries in the qualification towards Poland and Italy with 39 men’s teams and 38 women’s sides.

“Development across NORCECA is our main goal and I really believe we took a major step on that direction with our record number of tournaments last year,” he said. “We are looking forward to an even greater success in 2013, with the support and leadership of the FIVB President, Dr. Ary Graça and all our National Federations are anxious waiting for the season to kick off.”

Many national teams have already started training with the support of NORCECA’s coaching programme.