Three beach volleyball duos named to Canadian Olympic team
Four of the six athletes have previous Olympic experience.
Three beach volleyball pairs were named to Team Canada for the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris on Friday.
Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson make up one team, Heather Bansley and Sophie Bukovec will compete with them in the women’s tournament, while Samuel Schachter and Daniel Dearing will make up Canada’s men’s duo.
Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson both competed at Tokyo 2020 but with different partners. They made their debut as a duo on the Beach Pro Tour in February 2023, since then establishing themselves as one of the best pairs in the world. They earned their first Elite 16 gold medal in Montreal in July 2023, and served as Canada’s opening ceremony flag bearers for the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games en route to winning a silver medal.
They qualified for Paris 2024 based on their position in the FIVB World Rankings, where they currently sit fourth.
“It’s finally here! We have been preparing and looking forward to this moment since we embarked on this journey together less than two years ago,” said Humana- Paredes in a press release. “When we got together, our goals were clear: making history in Paris. As a new team (formed just two months before Olympic qualification began), we didn’t have much time before needing to execute in order to get Olympic points. We knew what the team was capable of and quickly we made our presence known, meeting our standards every chance we got.
“We wouldn’t have been able to do this without the support of our family and friends, but mostly to our chosen family and the team behind the team.”
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Paris 2024 will be Bansley’s third Olympic appearance following her fifth-place finishes at both Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. She retired after Tokyo 2020, but came back to the sport in July 2023, teaming up with Bukovec. The duo won silver at a Beach Pro Tour Challenge event in Brazil in March, and have found instant chemistry together.
Bukovec was recently Wilkerson’s partner, and the pair won a silver medal at the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships. Bukovec is a three-time NCAA National Champion, and won gold at the 2014 FIVB U21 World Championships. She will be making her Olympic debut in Paris.
“I have been taking a moment to enjoy this big accomplishment of qualifying for my third Olympic Games and Sophie’s first, but know that there is still lots of hard work to do ahead in preparation for Paris,” said Bansley in a press release. “We set a goal of trying to qualify for Paris together 11 months ago, which we knew was going to be extremely challenging and a little bit crazy, but also doable.”
Paris 2024 will be Schachter’s second Olympic appearance after previously competing at Rio 2016. Dearing will be making his Olympic debut in Paris.
They teamed up in 2022, winning a silver medal at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games shortly after. They also won gold at the 2022 NORCECA Beach Volleyball Tour Finals in Dominican Republic in December of that year.
On June 23, Schachter and Dearing secured the men’s continental spot at the NORCECA Beach Volleyball Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Tlaxcala, Mexico, while Bansley and Bukovec won the women’s spot. Both teams went undefeated throughout the event, without either dropping a set.
Canada has won one beach volleyball medal at the Olympics, a bronze medal in the men’s tournament at the 1996 Games in Atlanta — the sport’s Olympic debut. At Paris 2024 events will take place from July 27 to August 10 at the Eiffel Tower Stadium.
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