Belize Brings Home Gold at CADICA Games  

Team Belize is back from the 2024 CADICA Games and the athletes did not return empty handed. On Friday, a delegation of eleven track and field athletes flew to Costa Rica to compete in the annual Central American and Caribbean Athletic Championships. Last year, the team brought home several medals and this year, was another success. With two gold, one silver, three bronze medals and several personal best records broken, Cojac Smith, President of the Belize Athletics Association, says that Belize should be feeling nothing but pride.

 

Cojac Smith, President, Belize Athletics Association

“The youths did very well in this CADICA games. We have two gold medals. Kali Magana, she got a gold in four hundred and a gold in eight hundred. Then we have a silver and three bronze. So the silver was Jouvann Morgan. He got a silver, was very close to gold in triple jump and he did a PR in triple jump as well. And he got a bronze in long jump. The other two bronze were Summer. She got a bronze in shot put and did a PR as well. And the next bronze was Dario Crunckshanck. He did the high jump.  That’s the medal count that we have. So all of the eleven athletes that went, we did pretty good.It’s ecstatic. To be honest with you, we’re just trying our best to see how best we could move, track and field forward, and give these kids bigger opportunities for them to do well and be successful. So, while we at the association are doing our part, the highlight is really just the youths that did excellent and performed. Because without they performing, then the work that we did would have been for no reason. So, we have to give kudos to the youths that did excellent.”

 

Britney Gordon

“And what are the plans moving forward as you continue to work with these kids?”

 

Cojac Smith

“The plans moving forward is just continued development because while not everyone meddled, the other kids that went did very well as well. There were several personal bits in those as well and there’s a lot of potential in these youths, U18 and U20. You have standout in the other athletes like Nathan, Elvin, I don’t want to say the list because I might forget someone, but they are very. Very exceptional use and we just want to keep this score as well as others that were very close to the standard that did not able to make the trip and just continue pushing and developing sports. We have a lot of program that we want to put in place in terms of coaching development, officiating development and that will help holistically move track and feel forward and getting more youths and identifying more youths and recruiting. Recruiting because Belize has a lot of talent and a lot of times that we’re just not identifying these youths and even though we’re having these meets, we’re still not reaching everywhere that we could reach. So it’s just to continue identifying these youths and giving them positive opportunity for them to excel.”