By Johnelle McKenzie

Yesterday, the Ahmadiyya Basketball League returned from Chetumal where both their teams captured gold in the Copa Gatorade Bacalar Tournament. Love news spoke with Naveed Mangla, the President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, Belize, who said it was their second time participating in the competition.

Naveed Mangla, the President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, Belize: “So in this tournament we took two teams under 18, they are an open category team and in both teams we had ten players and these players were from all over Belize and of course some of them are also those that are playing elite right now and then some of them are those that have represented Belize on the national level also so we were happy and proud to be in the presence of such a talent that accompanied us and that talent was able to transfer some of those good experience that they brought with them to the younger kids that we took also. Not only did we win the tournament but both our teams were undefeated throughout the tournament. As champions of this tournament they gave us gold medals, T-shirts and the trophies for each category.”

Love news also spoke with Andrew Ortiz, one of the basketball players, who said that despite the challenge, they were able to capture gold.

Andrew Ortiz – Basketball player: “It was challenging for all of us because most of us haven’t played together on a team before and when we went there we put all our talent together and we knew what we had to do and the people across there were physical and stronger than us on the ground but they couldn’t hold us in the air and they couldn’t hold us up on the the three point line. We did our best and we went out there and we war. All my teammates pushed to do what they had to do even though part of the games they were playing us nasty but we manned up, we played physical and we walk away with the victory.”

Last year, the basketball league captured silver in the competition.

source:

http://lovefm.com/ahmadiyya-basketball-league-captures-gold-copa-gatorade-bacalar-tournament/