MEXICALI, Baja California, May 30, 2008.- Twelve women’s teams from the Americas start today competing in the Seventh Pan American Cup, the first qualifier to the FIVB 2009 World Grand Prix.

The top four teams, including the highest ranked of South America, win tickets to participate in the next year’s premier annual women’s event of FIVB. Cuba has won this tournament in four occasions with USA and Brazil having one title apiece.

Teams are divided in two pools with the winner of each one advancing directly to the semi final round. Second and third places teams will move to the quarterfinals and face each other in crossed matches. The division of the squads is as follows:

Pool A: Argentina, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mexico, Trinidad & Tobago and USA. Pool B: Brazil, Cuba, Canada, Peru, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

The coaches of the teams expressed their opinions and goals during the press conference held last night after the General Technical Meeting. Here is what they had to say:

Horacio Bastit (ARG): “This is my first experience with the women’s national team. Our goal is to finish among the top three of our pool and our project for this year and the subsequent is to consolidate us in the second place of South America behind Brazil.”

Luizomar de Moura (BRA): “Brazil is bringing a very young team but with enough international experience in the youth and junior levels. In our team we have several world champions at those levels.”

Naoki Miyashita (CAN): “Our team this year is a mix of veterans and young players. We hope to finish among the top four in the competition and give our players a valuable experience, especially for the young ones. Playing our first two matches against Cuba and Brazil will be a good test.”

Braulio Godines (CRC): “This cup marks my comeback to the team and my plan is to recapture the program that sent the squad to the last World Championships. We have six players who went to that event in 2006 and six newcomers.”

Felipe Calderon (CUB): “We are bringing a young team to this cup with the top players currently in the Mountreux tournament in preparation for the Olympics. I think we are going to play well and have a good performance as it is the characteristic of Cuban teams.”

Beato Miguel Cruz (DOM): “The team is coming off a high level event where we had an excellent participation. I hope we can continue playing at that level. Our objective is to finish among the top three as always has been the case in the previous editions.”

Luis Leon (MEX): “The base of this group is composed of players from our junior and youth national teams. We are working for the future and our goal is to give them valuable experience for the coming NORCECA events in those categories.”

Francisco dos Santos (PER): “We are here to learn a lot of things from teams of a high level. We have a few senior players and the others are newcomers. I think we have many opportunities of growing.”

Juan Carlos Nunez (PUR): “We have been playing well for four years and finishing fifth on each time. I hope this is the year we can materialize our dream of qualifying to the World Grand Prix.”

Francisco Cruz (TRI): “This is a young team participating just for the second time. Our goal is to score more points against our opponents than we did last year. Then we can measure our improvement.”

Tom Hogan (USA): “We are very excited to be here. We have a very young team. Hopefully they can get valuable international experience that will pay off in the future.”

Tomas Fernandez (VEN): “Here we start our critical path to Beijing. It is a tournament where Venezuela comes to play with a lot of intensity because our pool requires of that. Then we have to analyze the possible crossed matches. It is a tournament that will give us a good preparation towards Beijing.”

ul Castro Verdugo, President of the Organizing Committee and Sports Director of the State of Baja California.