Canada and Cuba Get Their World Championships Started

For this year’s World Championships, the Beach Volley Blog is following two teams, Canadian men Dan Dearing & Sam Schachter and Cuban women Leila Martinez & Lidianny Echeverria. They both got their world championship campaigns underway today. Both were considered underdogs and sadly for our teams, neither were able to pull of upsets. They did play some phenomenal volleyball though and have reason to be optimistic going forward.

This is part of a series covering the Beach World Championships in Rome. If you would like to understand why the focus is on Canada and Cuba, please check out this post from yesterday.

Dearing and Schachter thrill but fall just short

There are few things I like more than a great come back by an underdog. Dan Dearing and Sam Schachter were facing one of Italy’s biggest teams in the iconic Foro Italico and the first set of their match provided a dream storyline for their heroes journey. For large stretches of the match it looked like we were going to get just that, but their opening set match will just make the bigger narrative all the more exciting.

Daniele Lupo & Alex Ranghieri were the foes for the opening chapter, but I have to admit, they aren’t easy to cheer against. I’ve got to think a bit more about cast my villains. Lupo and Ranghieri aren’t very villainous. Actually, chapter three of this story will have an evil villain, but I’m not sure how much I want to go into that.

Set One

Facing the giants on their home soil, San and Dan showed their ridiculous athleticism again and again. A crazy scramble play leading to Dearing attacking an open net sent a clear message that they came to win. After jumping to a three point lead, they let the Italians come back and eventually fell behind by three themselves, 16-13. The Italians were gifted way to many points on Canadian service errors.

When the Italians reached their first set point up 20-17 it seemed all hope for the opening set was lost. Cue the dramatic music. Lupo short serve to Dearing and Sam sets over into an open space on two. Wait, what? And it worked. Set point number one saved. Now for the hard part, scoring from the service line. Clutch dig by Schachter, a less than great transition set by Dearing but Sam flashes one onto the back tape and the suddenly nervous Italians call time out.

Out of the timeout Dan gets a block, 20-20! Next Sam’s serve gives Italy all kinds of trouble and Canada is attacking a free…