Peru opens Lima 2019 Pan Am Games over Canada

LIMA, Peru, August 7, 2019.- Host Peru opened the Lima 2019 Pan American Games over Canada 3-1 (25-17, 25-21, 22-25, 25-18) in pool A on closing match on Wednesday night at the Multisport Complex El Callao of Lima, Peru.

Cheering and chanting from five thousand spectators at El Callao helped Peru’s solid 16-4 sizeable serving margin beat Canada´s 17-3 huge margin in blocks. Peru scored on 37 errors from Canada and committed 23.

Canada still recovered in set three stealing away one point from Peru’s final four point first win of the event on 41-37 advantage in attacks.

Angela Leyva and Karla Ortiz led Peru’s hitters with 17 and 16 points accordingly. Peruvian Middle blocker Maricarmen Guerrero led in serves acing 6 points. Three Canadians scored double-figures, captain Brianna Beamish with 14 points, Layne Van Buskirk with 13 points including 7 stuff blocks and Ruth White with 11 points.

On day two of the event, host Peru (1-0) plays the closing match against Colombia (0-1) and Canada (0-1) faces Dominican Republic (1-0).

Comments:

Karla Ortiz, captain of Peru: “It’s satisfying to begin the Pan American Games winning. It was complicated against a new Canada squad that we didn’t know much about, without knowing who we were facing. We are happy because the team´s reaction was as expected. The crowd was wonderful, it was exciting and we just finished two tournaments without filling up the venues”.

Francisco Hervas, Head coach of Peru: “We leave with a victory, it was nerve wrecking, not a brilliant performance and it’s not how we wish to play, but a first match is always difficult, there’s excitement, waiting, uncertainty and in the end we had doubts where we shouldn’t have”.

Brianna Beamish, captain of Canada: It was a really great first match for us. I think we started quitting our serves in and usually that’s one of our strengths. For the next game we need to pick up on our serving, stabilize our serving-passing a little bit and we will play a lot better”.

Shannon Winzer, Head coach of Canada: I thought Peru was effective defensively and they frustrated our offense quite a bit. On our side we had too many unforced errors and moments we should have been able to control and we didn’t, in the end that’s what let us down”.