Men’s Pan American Cup puts crucial ranking points on the line

LEÓN, Guanajuato, August 25, 2025.– The Senior Men’s Pan American Volleyball Cup awards important ranking points for qualification to the 2026 Central American and Caribbean Games.

The competition, to be held from August 26 to 31 at the Domo de la Feria, features twelve teams aiming to collect as many points as possible to boost their chances of qualifying for Santo Domingo 2026. The qualification system will be completed next year.

Augusto Sabbatini, Head Coach of Antigua and Barbuda: “The team has been training for sixty days. We’re bringing up a young team with a mix of experienced players. We are looking to improve for our next competition, the ECVA Final Four, which will be held in Antigua. This tournament is very important for us to showcase what we’ve been training in order to strengthen the team.”

David Preston, Head Coach of Canada: “We’ve had a very good training block. We have nine new members of our team that have limited international experience, so like most teams in their first year of their quad, we’ve made some good transitions. We do have some guys with some experience, so it could be a little bit different. Our senior team is preparing for the World Championship, so it’s been two agendas as we’ve been getting the guys ready. We are looking forward to seeing our young guys and how they handle this international event, so there’s a lot of excitement”.

Daniel Nejamkin, Head Coach of Chile: “We have never experienced a Pan American Cup with twelve teams, so we are very happy to be able to compete with everyone. We are glad to see so many teams from South America and NORCECA.”

Paolo Montagnani, Head Coach of Colombia: “We didn’t have a long preparation because I had to make a preselection and know all the players from Colombia, it’s my first year in Colombia. We did our best, unfortunately we had no friendly matches nor international events. I think we will be competitive and ready, we expect to have fun”.

Alexander Gutiérrez, Head Coach of Dominican Republic: “We will try to put on a good show because we are coming with practically a ‘B’ team due to multiple international commitments. Four players competed in Asunción, in Mexico for the Final Four, and in Guatemala for the U23 Pan American Cup, in addition to senior players who are just coming in and will have the opportunity to test themselves ahead of the 2026 Central American and Caribbean Games. This tournament is for testing and preparing ourselves for the Final Six, where we will have our full roster. We will give the responsibility to the players so they can embrace their role in the national team project.”

Reider Lucas, Head Coach of Guatemala: “This is a high-quality event with a good level of competition, and we are very happy to be here. We came with the objective of earning the ranking points necessary to qualify for the 2026 Central American Games. We will aim to compete well and show a good image.”

Carlos Eduardo Schwanke, Head Coach of Mexico:  “This competition will bring us a lot of strength because we will be playing in front of our home crowd, and we will rely heavily on them to play in our favor. We had a good week of preparation matches. We are focused on this tournament. By playing match by match, we will be able to improve and achieve a good position for Mexico.”

Jamille Torres, Head Coach of Puerto Rico: “We are highly motivated after winning the Final Four here in Mexico; it was a goal achieved because last year we won in Puerto Rico and now here. Last year in the Men’s Pan American Cup we won the bronze medal, and the goal is to improve or at least repeat last year’s performance.”

Keven Sporkslede, Team captain Suriname: “We just finished playing a CAZOVA tournament, which didn’t go as expected for us, but that’s volleyball, this time it was not our time to win.  We got to play some games to prepare for the Pan Am Cup which was very good”.

Andy Read, Head Coach of the United States: “The U.S. team is very excited to be here. We have prepared for several weeks, we had several guys that were training with VNL players during the summer and some others that just got in, and some players of our U23 team. We think we have a very strong team to compete in the most important tournament in our hemisphere this year. We are ready to play”.

Rubén Wolochin, Head Coach of Venezuela: “Our main goal is qualifying for the Central American and Caribbean Games. The second goal is to collect as many points as possible for the world ranking and to compete again after Venezuela’s five-year absence from international competitions. We will go step by step, seeing where we stand, and trying to put on the court what we’ve been able to train.”