TEPIC, Nayarit, Mexico, July 15, 2022.- Canada moved into the semifinals of the Men’s Pan American Cup NORCECA Final Six after defeating Puerto Rico in straight sets 3-0 (25-18, 25-22, 25-23) on Friday at the Amado Nervo Auditorium of Tepic, Nayarit.
Canada ends the preliminary round with a 4-1 record and 19 points finishing among the top four in the event. Puerto Rico with 2-3 record and 7 points waits for the days’ results to confirm their semifinal spot.
Puerto Rico´s effort in leading the third set up to point 14 wasn’t enough to stop Canada’s offense who finished with a huge 41-27 advantage in attacks. They also were more effective in blocks by a comfortable 9-4 margin and a 4-0 lead in serves.
From Canada’s side, opposite hitter Jordan Canham led all scorers with 15 points, followed by outside hitter Logan House with 11 points and middle blocker Xander Ketrzynski with 10 points who led in blocks with 4 points.
Outside hitters Klistan Lawrence and Pedro Molina led Puerto Rico with 9 and 8 points respectively.
Xander Ketrzynski, Top blocker of Canada: “We used our strengths as a team to push forward. For this weekend you can say it’s a normal day in the job in these tournaments, a lot of the guys are very experienced and played for team Canada for a while, so it’s going to be the same, either you win, or you lose giving the best and whatever happens you just gotta leave it on the court. I believe there are big things to come for this team, we’ve been working our system and we are looking forward to the semifinals and finals”.
Nathan Groenveld, Assistant Coach of Canada: “We had the goal making the semifinals so we’re really excited that we locked that in place right now. The bigger goal was to play better and better every match and we feel we have done that; and today when we side-out it was awesome. We’ll go on work on our block-defense to be ready for tomorrow. Regardless of our opponent, we have to keep on improving, it’s going to be on our side of the net, so we gotta make sure about it”.
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