Canada wins the bronze medal at Pan Am Cup

GATINEAU, Canada, June 18, 2011 – Canada returned to the medal podium at the Pan Am Cup men’s volleyball tournament on Saturday with a decisive 25-14, 25-20, 25-21 victory over a young but very talented squad from Puerto Rico.

Gavin Schmitt led the Canadian attack with 14 points while team captain Fred Winters added 12 and Gord Perrin 9. Ulises Maldonado and Ezequiel Cruz were top points men for the Puerto Rico with eight each.

‘’We are happy with the win tonight but we still have a lot of things to work on,’’ said Canada’s head coach Glenn Hoag.  ‘’This tournament for us will be a good reference point on what we need to work on and it was also a great chance to evaluate the players.’’

‘’It’s nice to finish with a win, especially that we are now headed into two weeks of training,’’ Winters said.  ‘’It was probably our best executed match of the tournament.  But it’s early in the season and I done this enough times to know it’s a long process to get the chemistry back.

‘’We thought we had a pretty good shot of winning tonight but they stepped it up a notch and beat us,’’ said Puerto Rico’s captain Edgardo Goas.  ‘’It was still a successful tournament for us.  We’ve only been together for two weeks so nobody expected us to battle for a medal.’’