Canada's Brandie Wilkerson holds the ball during a quarter final game against Australia at the Elite Beach Pro Tour, on Saturday, July 9, 2022, in Gstaad, Switzerland. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Schneider/Keystone via AP
OSTRAVA, Czechia – Canadian beach volleyball duo Brandie Wilkerson and Melissa Humana-Paredes won bronze on Sunday at the Ostrava Beach Pro Tour Elite 16 tournament.
The Torontonians defeated Switzerland’s Nina Brunner and Tanja Hüberli 2-0 (21-16, 21-14) in the 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).”
Wilkerson and Humana-Paredes narrowly missed qualifying for the final in a tiebreak 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,” said Wilkerson. “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.”
Cannon and Sponcil were later defeated by Brazil’s Ana PatrÃcia/ and Duda 21-17, 14-21, 12-15 in the women’s gold-medal match.
This was Canada’s only entry in the tournament.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2023.
