Volleyball Canada – April 22, 2016: Canadians Josh Binstock and Sam Schachter, both of Richmond Hill, Ontario, finished fifth at the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Fuzhou Open in China.
 
“We’re happy with our result as it’s our best result of the season,” explained Binstock. “We obviously haven’t had the best start to the season, but we knew it would inevitably come with persistence and belief.”
 
Tournament number-two seeded fellow Canadians Chaim Schalk (Red Deer, AB) and Ben Saxton (Calgary), who went undefeated in pool play, fell to Binstock/Schachter in Round 2 of the play offs 1-2 (19-21, 21-13, 10-15).  Saxton and Schalk ended up with a ninth ranking at this event.
 
Italy’s Nicolai/Lupo then beat Binstock/Schachter 2-0 (21-18, 21-16) in the next round.
 
Binstock continued: “It’s always nice beating a team from your own country, and we feel like we let the Italy match slip away. A lot of positives to take from this tournament and lessons learned moving forward.”
 
On the women’s side, last year’s Fuzhou champions, Jamie Broder (Victoria, BC) and Kristina Valjas (Toronto, ON) finished 17th after falling to Gallay/Klug of Argentina in the playoffs.
 
Melissa Humana-Paredes (Toronto, ON) and Taylor Pischke (Winnipeg, MB) finished 25th after failing to advance from their pool.

The men’s medal matches will be held on Saturday and the women’s medal matches will be held on Sunday.

For more on the FIVB World Tour, see www.fivb.org

The provisional Olympic rankings can be found here:

• Men: http://www.fivb.org/EN/BeachVolleyball/OGRanking_M.asp
• Women: http://www.fivb.org/EN/BeachVolleyball/OGRanking_W.asp

 
Volleyball Canada media contact:
Jackie Skender
E-mail: jskender@volleyball.ca
Phone: 613.794.7676