Pavan, Humana-Paredes lead strong Canadian showing at Fort Lauderdale Major

Four out of five Canadian beach volleyball teams in main draw of the $600,000 US Fort Lauderdale Major finished with top-10 rankings on Saturday.

The top finisher for Canada was the team of Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan.

Ranked second in the tournament, the duo went undefeated in pool play and playoffs, but fell to the host country team of Summer Ross and Brooke Sweat under the lights on Friday night, 0-2 (20-22, 23-25) in the quarter-finals to end up fifth overall.

"Honestly, kudos to Brooke and Summer, they played an outstanding match," said Humana-Paredes.

"We were definitely outworked a little bit. It took us a little bit to get into our groove. I had lots of transition opportunities I didn't take care of. We were getting a lot of touches but we weren't executing them. ... There's still a lot of season left. Early in the tournament I thought we managed the elements really well."

The other Canadian entries on the women's side — Heather Bansley and Brandie Wilkerson, and Taylor Pischke and Jamie Broder — were eliminated in the playoffs to each finish ninth overall.

On the men's side, Sam Schachter and Sam Pedlow beat World silver medallists Clemens Doppler and Alexander Horst of Austria in the first round of the playoffs, but then fell to Pablo Herrera Allepuz and Adrian Gavira Collado of Spain in a three-set match in the second round to also come away ninth.

Grant O'Gorman and Ben Saxton were eliminated in the first round of playoffs and finished 17th.