Mon. Feb. 27, 2023
As we watched the TV screen and the large number of fans attending Friday night’s BEBL basketball encounter between then undefeated Benny’s Belize Hurricanes (4-0) and Belize City Defenders (3-1), it really began to look like our sports in Belize may be on the brink of true professionalism, and with it the long yearned-for step into real regional competitiveness on a consistent basis. Real professionalism in sports is only possible when fan attendance, and thus club earnings from games, is enough to truly sustain the time and dedication required of athletes for them to reach international competitive level.
While all the FIFA-sponsored development courses for coaches and referees and other administrators of the game, and even the sponsorship of football competitions in the various age categories, are great for enhancing youth development up to a certain level, the critical next step up into the regional echelons of the sport can only be achieved when raw natural talent is married to incentivized dedication and commitment to hard work. And that only comes when there is an attractive financial package available to make it worth an athlete’s while to aspire and to sacrifice his body and mind to achieving the best he possibly can.
The brief success that Belize achieved a couple decades ago (1998) at the Caricom Basketball Championships, which Belize hosted, was made possible with the help of a number of our USA-based Belizean American players, who had been nurtured and incentivized in the American sports system where the corridor from amateur to professional is well-lit and the infrastructural and financial support in their amateur system enhances and sustains the level of commitment to top performance of athletes who can thus be called up at any time to join the professional ranks, either in local professional leagues, the highest of which is the NBA, or in other professional leagues overseas, in Europe, Asia or South America.
Belize’s national team’s best achievement in football to date has been in 2013 when, again with the help of a number of our USA-based and nurtured Belizean American players, our national team was able to secure a berth in the Concacaf Gold Cup. But just getting there was an achievement, because the big scores we took demonstrated clearly that we were not up to the level of competition in the region.
And it is not a matter that we don’t have the natural talent in Belize. It has been proven time and time again that our youth athletes, whether in track and field or any other sport, can compete with their peers effectively, until the others advance to a higher level in their respective countries, all of which have very strong amateur leagues, but more importantly, a vibrant professional level that provides significant financial incentive for amateurs to aspire for greatness in their respective sport.
As a young teenager, Belize’s Jaheed Smith was competitive with the likes of Jamaica’s Usain Bolt, who went on in a few years to become the world’s best sprinter.
From way back in the 1950s, Belize’s Ludwig Lightburn, born and raised in Belize, was competitive with the best in the world in boxing; some say he would have become world champion had he been given a crack at the title, but the reigning champ consistently “ducked” Ludwig.
Reports were that young Norman “Tilliman” Nunez had the fans in Honduras bowing down in waves of adulation across the stadium when he and Belize’ Juventus FC humiliated their own Real Espana in San Pedro Sula in the mid-1990s. But for differences with the then FFB administration, Tilliman was not featured on the national team. Incidentally, that Juventus team was perhaps the closest a Belize club team came to being truly professional, and that was because of the unique personality of their owner/manager and the unique (though questionable) financial backing he was able to secure for his team. But his method was unsustainable, and could not be duplicated by other teams in the fledgling semipro league; so, as impressive as was their 5-year reign as champions, it was still aided by massive financing and the input of some professional players from other Central American countries along with the Belizean players who were similarly incentivized financially to effectively compete at the highest level in Central American football.
But individual club successes, where special financing is available and foreigners can be fielded, do not automatically convert to national team competitiveness regionally. The level of our whole top league has to be raised, whether it is the PLB or the BEBL, or whatever sport. We suggest here that competitiveness regionally in the major sports must be preceded by a local level of performance equal to that at the top level in the countries against whom we aim to compete. And if they are able to sustain a fully professional league, it means that they have a ready pool of players who are routinely dedicating 3 to 4 hours a day training and preparing for competition. How can we ask our “after work” training amateur or “semipro” players to effectively compete against that level of competition? Only when our teams are truly professional, with fully paid attractive salaries for players, will they begin to reach up to the standards of our foreign competitors.
When Coke Milpros travelled to Morelia, Mexico in 1988, their Concacaf professional opponents represented a city with a population of 500,000 people, more than double that of the nation of Belize, which at the time was reported to have around 185,000 citizens. (The first semipro football league was not initiated in Belize until 1991.) As was the norm in our amateur situation back then, where everything was “for love of the game,” all our players and management personnel were voluntary, as was the “masseur” who took it upon himself to administer his particular brand of massages to players before a match, or when anyone got hurt or suffered cramps. The amused Morelian officials and game commentators sarcastically referred to our team masseur as “El Doctor”, while some fans jokingly referred to Harry Eusey as “Wolfman” because of his very long locks and beard.
With our country’s population almost tripling in size since the glory days of the seventies, PLB games should by now be routinely attracting a couple thousand fans, which might adequately suffice to compensate and motivate our players to reach another level.
Basketball seems to be on the brink of breaking through. Fans are hungry for clean, safe weekend entertainment, and the Civic has the comfortable accommodations to become the real Mecca of Belize basketball, even attracting fans from across the border for international tournaments or invitational games.
If properly equipped and enhanced for fan comfort and accommodation, the history and mystique of the MCC Garden could likewise draw thousands of paying fans on a Sunday afternoon. But the quality of play must be attractive to keep the fans coming. It may be a “chicken or the egg” situation, but every successful business needs adequate financing. Our impoverished players can’t make that leap without “backative”. The business community, government, and the FFB/FIFA have to combine their efforts to bring back the MCC and make the step up to real professionalism in football possible in Belize.
Belizean fans are tired of seeing our athletes being beaten and humiliated by our Central American counterparts in football. And it has been a while since we have done anything spectacular in regional basketball also.
Despite their sometimes overly arrogant style of promotion, the Hurricanes basketball organization has still demonstrated, like the Raiders of the nineties, that effective and aggressive promotion, as in any business venture, is a vital element for success in professional sports. An adequate venue is essential, but only with substantial investment in advertisement and promotion can sporting organizations hope to achieve the returns necessary through fan attendance to effectively sustain the level of training intensity and sacrifice that their athletes will need to raise their level to regional competitiveness, where even greater opportunities await them.