World Deaf Basketball recap: Gold for USA men, Bronze for USA women

[Transcript] Last week from June 27 to July 6, the 5th World Deaf Basketball (WDB) was hosted in Lublin, Poland. WDB is under Deaf International Basketball Federation (DIBF), which is sanctioned by the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (ICSD).

USA men were one of the 15 participating countries. USA women were one of the 10 participating countries.

The USA men played against Lithuania in the championship match and won gold with a score of 105, Lithuania 77.

Lithuania men’s basketball has won gold for World Deaf Basketball in 2007, 2011, and 2015. So, this is one of the USA men’s proudest moments to defeat Lithuania and win gold for this year. This also means USA men automatically qualifies to participate in the Deaflympics in 2021.

We reached out to the USA men’s head coach Jimmy Newsome for a few words through VP. He said that he is not easily impressed, but this year's team really impressed him with how quickly they were able to learn how to work together. Right now, he is thinking about setting up a summer camp for the youth to get training from the USA men basketball team and also to raise support for the team to go to the Deaflympics.

The USA women played against Turkey for bronze and won with the score 76 to 72.

Greece defeated Lithuania to win the women’s gold.

We noticed that there were comments trending around that the USA women should have won their semifinal match to play in the championship and had a strong enough team to win gold, but that there were some communication issues between the coach and the players.

We reached out to the USA women's coach, Deb Ayres, but have not gotten a response.

USA men's team player Noah Valencia, 20, won the MVP award.

[Image of Noah Valencia winning MVP award]

One cool fact about Valencia is that he got to play with his father, Jeremias Valencia, and his uncle, Steve Valencia-Biskupiak on court. The family trio was able to share the same victory in Poland.

[Image of Valencia trio]

Michael Lizarraga was selected as one of the Best Five All Tournament players for the men. Hannah Neild and Nukeitra Hayes were selected for the women’s Best All Five.

(Images of Lizarraga, Neild, and Hayes)

Neild was also named the top scorer.

Congratulations to the USA men for winning gold and the USA women for winning bronze.

Right now WDB is opening up bids for a country to host the 6th WDB in 2023.

https://www.gallaudetathletics.com/sports/mbkb/2019-20/releases/teamusagold?fbclid=IwAR0I1928gutMjIDNLqnVnekB0hNAYBcvaH4Eq8lHQc9Uuf4cClSnZWFqpLk

https://www.facebook.com/World.Deaf.Basketball/

http://www.2019wdbc.pl/

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