Canadians Pull Off Great Escape while Cuba Ease Out of Pool

A huge roller-coaster victory for Canada and a lackadaisical win for Cuba mean the teams we are following at the World Championships in Rome made it out of their pools. Both teams finished third in their groups and continue the tournament in the Lucky Losers round tomorrow.

Canada not only needed a win today, they needed to beat the Dutch by a large enough margin to overcome their rally points deficit against either Italy or Poland. Luckily for the Canadians the first tie breaker is total rally points in the group, not head to head results, or their tournament would have been over no matter what.

Leila Martinez & Lidianny Echeverria were also 0-2, but their outlook was much brighter as they were facing another 0-2 team from Egypt. A win of any kind for Cuba would secure third place for them.

The Beach Volley Blog has been following Canadians Sam Schachter & Dan Dearing and Cubans Leila Martinez & Lidianny Echeverria on their World Championship journey. Here are the links to the earlier posts if you want to catch up on anything you missed.

Canada gets it done when it matters

Sam Schachter and Dan Dearing’s prospects for advancing didn’t look great as they entered their final pool play match on Monday morning. The Canadians had shown flashes of brilliance against Italy’s Daniele Lupo & Alex Ranghieri and Poland’s Michael Bryl and Bartosz Losiak, but came up just short in their first two matches. Their final match was against Christiaan Varenhorst & Steven van de Velde, who were already 2-0 in Rome.

Great start sends strong message

An ace and an early hitting error by the Dutch gave Canada an immediate 3-0 lead to start the first set. Schachter and Dearing were siding out well, but frequent serving errors by the Dutch made their job even easier. Still, Varenhorst and van de Velde battled back to close the gap to 8-7. Dearing picked up a block to build the lead to 3 points again. Their side out game was firing, too, as Sam’s setting was on point and Dearing followed his vocal partners calls to tool the giant blocker or hit right past him. Late in the first set, Canada only needed to continue siding out to win the set, but padded their account by coming up with a couple more points late, including an awkward reverse pokey by Dearing after a long rally. Canada ran away with a 21-16 first set win.

A set to…