THE CANADIAN PRESS

Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

1 Comment(s)

PHUKET, Thailand - Marie - Andree Lessard of Ville LaSalle, Que., and Annie Martin of Sherbrooke, Que., finished ninth Friday at the 14th and final stop on the FIVB beach volleyball World Tour.

The Canadian pair won two of their three matches to match their beat result of the season, achieved twice previously.

In their first match of the day, the 16th seeds beat No. 31 Svitlana Baburina and Galyna Osheyko of Ukraine, 21-17, 21-13.

They followed that up by upsetting the eighth-seeded duo of Simone Kuhn and Nadine Zumkehr of Switzerland 21-18, 21-19, gold medallists at last week's stop in China.

They then lost to Maria Bratkova and Evgenia Ukolova of Russia 21-18, 21-16 which left them ninth.

"We beat the Swiss earlier this season so we were feeling very confident," said Lessard. "We had some momentum and we played aggressively and followed our game plan. It was a lot of fun. But in this heat and humidity, it took a lot out of us for our third match."

Lessard and Martin plan to take a month off before resuming training for the 2010 season.

"We've really improved a lot throughout the season," said Lessard. "It was a year in which we learned to play together and develop of style of play. We've built an offence based on a lot of movement to create fast paced plays and we've continued work hard on our service game. We know there's a lot of room for improvement and we are excited about that."