Volleyball Canada announced its men’s and women’s teams for the 2012 FISU Beach Volleyball World Championships and Melissa Humana-Paredes, a member of the York University Lions women’s volleyball team, is among the selected athletes.
Humana-Paredes will represent Canada along with her partner Taylor Pischke, who also competes in the CIS for the University of Manitoba Bisons. They will be joined at the event by the men’s entry of Sam Pedlow and Grant O’Gorman.
Right: Melissa Humana-Paredes competes for York
The selection to the Canadian squad for the championships continues an already stellar year for the second-year outside hitter from Toronto. Humana-Paredes was recently named York’s female athlete of the year after earning Ontario UniversityAthletics first-team all-star and CIS second-team all-Canadian honours for the 2011-2012 season.
The FISU Beach Volleyball World Championships will take place Sept. 12 to 16 in Maceio, Brazil.
Humana-Paredes and Pischke booked their trip to Brazil with a victory in the selection tournament final over Alexandra Hudson of the University of Toronto and Kayla Ng of Waterloo by a score of 21-11, 21-15.
Also competing in the women’s event were York students Victoria Altomare and Caleigh Whitaker, who won the bronze-medal match 21-18, 22-20 over the University of Toronto’s Charlotte Sider and Julia Hamer.
In the men’s final, Pedlow and O’Gorman defeated Simon Fecteau-Boutin of Université Laval and Mike Plantiga of the University of Alberta 19-21, 21-19, 15-8. In the third-place match, Paul Podstawka of McMaster University in Hamilton and Tom Podstawka of York defeated Will Sidgwick of Queen’s and Cam Wheelan of the University of Waterloo 21-16, 15-21, 21-19.