Beach duo fifth at FIVB Rome Finals

Canada’s Melissa Humana-Paredes (Toronto, ON) and Sarah Pavan (Kitchener, ON) will finish fifth in their final FIVB tournament of the season.

The Brazilian team of Agatha Bednarczuk and Eduarda “Duda” Santos Lisboa (currently ranked fourth in the world) eliminated reigning world champions Humana-Paredes and Pavan with a 2-0 (21-18, 21-14) quarterfinal win at the US$600,000 FIVB tournament.

“I don’t think we’ve been playing particularly well all week; we played well against them in Vienna (which Pavan/Melissa won),” said Sarah Pavan after today’s match. “We didn’t deserve to win that game, and it’s sad to end the tournament like that… but they are a really good team and to beat them you have to be playing well.”

“But when we look at the season as a whole, it’s been a great adventure – being world champions and winning in Vienna, we’ve achieved our goals for this season. Our last goal was to win here in Rome, but we are world champions and that is very special to us. We are now looking forward to Tokyo (Olympics) and continuing to build and get better.”

Fellow Canadians Brandie Wilkerson and Heather Bansley finished 17th in Rome.