Volleyball Empowerment ignites the Bahamas' dream for NORCECA glory

· A total of CHF 18,000 has been invested in coach support in the Bahamas to date

· Men’s and women’s national teams finished fourth and fifth respectively at the Caribbean Zonal Volleyball Association Senior Championships 2023

· The teams aim to regularly qualifying for NORCECA competitions moving forward

The Bahamas Volleyball Federation (BVF) is confident of becoming regular participants in North, Central America and Caribbean Volleyball Confederation (NORCECA) competitions in the future, thanks to support from the FIVB Volleyball Empowerment programme.

The FIVB has invested CHF 9,000 in coach support, with Brazilian coach Augusto Sabbatini assisting with both the men’s and women’s national teams during the 18th edition of the Caribbean Zonal Volleyball Association (CAZOVA) Senior Championships held in Paramaribo, Suriname in July 2023. This contribution is in addition to a previous investment of CHF 9,000 in coach support.

The Bahamas men’s team finished fourth while the women’s team ranked fifth. The winners of the zonal tournament gained automatic qualification for the NORCECA Championships next year.

Despite falling short of qualification for the 2025 NORCECA Championships, BVF Vice President Kurtwood Greene declared his optimism that the national teams can feature regularly in subsequent editions with Volleyball Empowerment’s support.

He stated: “Sabbatini has a lot of international experience and he brought a different energy for the three months that he assisted our senior teams. The players were excited and determined to do better.

“We’ve always held our own at CAZOVA level, it’s just that we had some logistical challenges in the preparations phase which affected our performance last year. Having reached the semi-finals, we have talked to the players and told them that we should aim higher than the zone.

“We are targeting the NORCECA Championship where we want to be competing regularly against strong teams like the USA, Canada and Cuba.”

The BVF is hopeful that with local coaches such as Lloyd Davis and Jason Saunders learning from Sabbatini, the pathway for youth players can continue to develop and the transition from junior to senior national teams can be streamlined.

“We want our coaches to learn from the experts so that we have a common coaching philosophy from the junior to senior category. Our plan is to consistently feature in the age group competitions at zonal level so that we can start injecting new blood to the senior team,” added Greene.

“This way we can get back to the top of our zone and feature more frequently in continental competitions especially with the men’s team which is showing a lot of promise.”