Canada begins Pan American Cup defeating Colombia

CORDOBA, Mexico, August 28, 2018. – Canada began the Men’s Pan American Cup defeating Colombia 3-1 (25-19, 23-25, 25-22, 25-22) in pool B at the Arena Cordoba in Cordoba, Mexico.

Canada started the tournament that grants five tickets to the Pan American Games to be held in Lima, Peru, with great rhythm taking down Colombia who resisted the whole match, engaging in a well fought battle.

Canada held a comfortable 50-39 advantage in attacks and 6-2 in serving points, while Colombia did better in blocks with 11-8 margin. Canada finished with 36 errors and Colombia with 34.

Wing spiker Blake Scheerhoorn scored a match-high of 17 points, with middle blockers Justin Duff and Danny Demyanenko contributing with 14 and 12 points accordingly; while wing spiker Brandon Koppers added 11 points. Colombia’s top scorers were opposite player Gustavo Larrahondo with 14 points and wing spiker Iván Hurtado with 12 points.

Canada will face Dominican Republic in their next performance and Colombia plays against Brazil.

Leading scorer Blake Sheerhoorn of Canada said “today we just wanted to come out and get a feel for the ball and I think we accomplished that. We are excited moving forward to the next games in the tournament. There are a few things we have to work on and we’ll break them down in video. We lost the second set but we were able to regain in the fourth”.

Larry McKay head coach of Canada thanked the crowd’s support “we are glad to be here; Colombia was a great opponent, they were very good. We played much better, but not much better, it was very close, and we had some good luck”.

Camilo Ambuila captain of Colombia said their team comes renovated from the one at the Barranquilla Games “we have younger players because several of our players are in Europe in their clubs. We must come out in try to win, we knew it would be complicated today, and despite our errors in serves, I believe we played together”.

Eliseo Ramos head coach of Colombia indicated “I am glad because some of the athletes in the group are developing, we played with good rhythm. We are confident that this tournament will help them to develop and that we’ll have a better game level against Dominican Republic, a match that decides if we continue to fight”.