FUKUOKA 鈥� The Canadian women's volleyball team's push for Olympic qualification hit a snag Tuesday with a lopsided 3-0 loss to Italy in Volleyball Nations League action.
The Italians, ranked fourth in the world, posted set scores of 25-16, 25-15 and 25-14 in the dominant win.
Italy's Paola Egonu led all scorers with 18 points.
Kiera Van Ryk of Surrey, sa国际传媒, had 13 points for sa国际传媒, which fell to 5-4 in VNL play.
"Italy is an exceptional team, I鈥檇 say one of the strongest teams we have faced so far this year," said sa国际传媒 head coach Shannon Winzer. "We didn鈥檛 play to our full potential for sure, and that is disappointing.
"No one wants to lose like that, but (the) margin of error becomes even smaller against a team like that."
Italy led 37-30 in attack points, 11-1 in blocks and 7-2 in points from serves. sa国际传媒 lost eight more points to errors than Italy (20-12).
鈥淲e struggled on first contact, we struggled on attack 鈥� It just wasn鈥檛 a good game at our end," Winzer said. "The best thing we can do is take what we can from it and move on as quickly as possible. What we do next is the most important thing."
The 10th-ranked Canadian women are still vying for a place at this summer's Olympics in Paris.
Seven women鈥檚 teams have already qualified. The remaining spots will go to the top five unqualified teams in the FIVB rankings at the end of the VNL preliminary phase.
sa国际传媒 next faces host Japan on Thursday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2024.
The Canadian Press
