Winnipeg’s Pischke sets her sights on bronze at Pan Am Games

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This article was published 19/07/2015 (4044 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO – The gold medal dream has come to an end for Winnipeg’s Taylor Pischke at the Pan Am Games.

The Cuban duo of Lianma Flores and Leila Martinez defeated Pischke and her partner Melissa Humana-Paredes. The Cubans took the first set 21-18, before Pischke and Humana-Paredes fought back to win the second 21-17. But in the deciding set, the Cubans caught fire and dominated the Canadians 15-7 to advance to Tuesday’s gold medal volleyball match.

“I think that our level of play was still pretty good. It’s tough,” an emotional Pischke said moments after the match. “Cuba’s amazing. They are a really good team so we needed to play even better (than in Saturday’s quarterfinal). I think that we just fell short a little bit. They were on point and there’s not a whole lot you can do — they’re so athletic; they’re just so strong.”

Humana-Parades added the loss “hurts more mentally than it does physically.

“We played a pretty solid match but they just came out a little bit stronger,” said the Torontonian. “They definitely took that win, but we’re going to learn from it.”

The 22-year-old Canadians still have a lot to play for in one last match on Tuesday, where they have a chance to make Canadian volleyball history with a first-ever medal for Canada in women’s beach volleyball at the Pan Am Games.

“I think it’s important that we forget about this match,” said Pischke, whose father, Garth, is the long-time coach of the University of Manitoba’s men’s team and a two-time Olympian in volleyball. “And a bronze medal is amazing, too, and that’s what our goal is now and that’s why we’ve got to adjust our goals because we obviously wanted to be in that gold medal match but a bronze medal would be pretty sweet, too.”

When asked if the loss carries extra disappointment because it was in Canada, Humana-Paredes said it didn’t make any difference.

“It would be disappointing whether we were in Canada or whether we were in Brazil or in Mexico,” she said. “I think it’s always disappointing losing a semi-final match when you have the opportunity to go for gold. But it feels even better to be amongst people who care for you and who want you to do well and who are always supporting you. I think it’s pretty comforting to think that they’re still going to cheer for us in the next match, and that they were still cheering for us until the very last point.”

Pischke said the home crowd has been a big factor in the tandem’s overall success at this tournament, where they had not dropped a set until Sunday’s match.

“The crowd has been such a difference-maker,” she said. “Having all these people on your side cheering for you, it’s incredible. I’ve never played in front of a crowd like this and it’s so much fun being on the court. It just gives you that extra person on the court cheering you on and giving you extra energy when you’re super tired and super hot and it’s really humid. It helps a lot.”

She said Sunday’s heat and humidity for their mid-afternoon match — which was much more pronounced than Saturday when the team played in the evening — was not a factor in their defeat. And playing twice in less than 24 hours wasn’t an issue either, she said.

In short, she wasn’t going to make any excuses for the defeat.

“We’re used to playing two or three matches in a day (on tour) so you can’t really blame it on that,” she said. “We had a lot of time to recover. And it was a little windy, but other than that it was perfect conditions.”