METRO NEWS HALIFAX

Canadian beach volleyballers dunked in the same pool

MATTHEW WUEST

METRO HALIFAX

Published: September 02, 2011 2:43 a.m. 

A win-win situation, this was not.

Due to some unfortunate luck in seeding positions, two-thirds of Canada’s men’s representation at the FIVB world junior beach volleyball championship was pitted against itself at the Sands at Salter courts on the Halifax waterfront on Thursday.

The result was a spirited head-to-head matchup, with William Sidgwick and Fiodar Kazhamiaka just barely beating Nick Del Bianco and Ben Chow 21-17, 18-21, 16-14.

“We’re in this tournament to kick other teams’ asses, not our own,” said the 20-year-old Sidgwick, of ending up in a four-team pool with another Canadian entry. “It was unfortunate.”

There are six pools of four, with the top-two teams in each advancing to the round of 16 along with the top-four third-place teams overall.

Both Canadian entries went on to post wins later in the day, leaving Sidgwick and Kazhamiaka at 2-0 atop the pool and Del Bianco and Chow tied for second at 1-1.

“I’m fully confident they’ll come second and we’ll come first,” Sidgwick said. “If we do that, we all have a chance to get to the end, and that’s all that matters.”

Del Bianco and Chow are a wild-card entry at the event, but they pushed Sidgwick and Kazhamiaka to the brink in a match that could have gone either way.

“We’ve practised against them, played against them and we know their tendencies,” Chow said. “We had a good game plan against them, but we just didn’t execute.”

It’s entirely possible the two teams could meet again in the playoff round, or perhaps draw a matchup against top-ranked Canadians Garrett May and Danny Demyanenko.