Aug. 15: Canada’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson (both of Toronto, ON) won their pool at the Beach Volleyball World Pro Tour Elite16 in Montreal, Quebec, today.
In their early Friday pool match, Melissa/Brandie beat Ittlinger/Grüne of Germany 2-1 (19-21, 21-16, 15-10). The second match was also a battle to a tie-break set. Melissa and Brandie faced Brazil’s Carol/ Rebecca, which ended 2-1 (21-17, 13-21, 15-13) and took the crowd on a rollercoaster ride of momentum switches.
“It’s great that we had battles in our pool-play stage,” said Humana-Paredes after the win over Brazil. “It challenges us and we’ve already had to experience some adversity and overcome some obstacles. You want to head into every playoff knowing that you’ve been challenged. Tomorrow’s a new tournament – we’ll take the lessons from pool play and put them into the next matches.”
This Canadian team, 2024 Olympic silver medalists, went undefeated in Pool D of the women’s tournament and go directly to the quarterfinals at 7 pm ET on Saturday.
Canada’s men’s team of Jonny Pickett (Wiarton, ON) and two-time Olympian Sam Schachter (Richmond Hill, ON) lost to number four seed Evandro/Arthur Lanci of Brazil also in a tie-break 2-1 (25-23, 20-22, 15-12) and do not advance.
Relative newcomer Jonny Pickett still relished the opportunity to play at home: “I didn’t know what to expect coming into Montreal. I didn’t anticipate the amount of support and that Canadian fans are crazy about beach volleyball. It was really cool, especially as a younger player coming into the sport, I would love to see more events in Canada. It’s one of my first times playing in front of a massive crowd like that,” said Pickett. “We have some things to refine this next week in practice before going Hamburg to qualify for that tournament.”
Also on Friday, local favourite Marie-Alex Bélanger of Saint-Alphonse-Rodriguez, QC, and Lea Monkhouse of Mississauga, ON, fell to Dani/Tania of Spain 1-2 (21-16, 17-21, 10-15) ending up 0-3 in their pool. Despite not winning today, they did experience some very competitive matches here in Montreal. They do not advance.
- More on international teams, results and photos can be found here.
- Ticket Info: https://mtlbeachprotour.com/
- Watch the action on Radio-Canada, CBC Sports and VBTV.
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