June 04, 2023: Canada top-ranked women’s beach volleyball pair – Brandie Wilkerson and Melissa Humana-Paredes – won the bronze match today at the Ostrava Beach Pro Tour Elite 16 tournament.
The Canadians, both from Toronto, defeated Swiss team Nina Brunner and Tanja Hüberli 2-0 (21-16, 21-14) in Sunday’s third-place contest in the Czech Republic.
“I think with this game we went in with the mentality of leaving it all out on the court,” said Humana-Paredes. “It’s been a long week, so we wanted to put everything we could into it, and I think we did. We came out with the result we wanted (from this match).”
Earlier today, the Canadian team narrowly missed qualifying for the final in a tie-break loss to Terese Cannon and Sarah Sponcil of the United States (19-21, 23-21, 15-13). Canada worked from the qualifying round to win their pool advance to the playoffs.
“We keep working; this is amazing, to come from the qualifier to a medal, but there’s still a couple spots at the top that we want to reach (on the podium), so there’s a lot of work to be done,” said Brandie Wilkerson.
USA’s Cannon and Sponcil were later defeated by Brazil’s Ana Patrícia/ Duda 21-17, 14-21, 12-15 in the women’s gold-medal match.
This was Canada’s only entry in the tournament.
This year, Canada will host two Beach Pro Tour events – a Challenge event in Edmonton (July 20-23) and an Elite 16 tournament in Montreal from July 26 to 30.
Photo & video: Nils Kopke @nils_beachinside
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