Pavan, Humana-Paredes miss out on beach volleyball bronze in Ostrava

Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes will not return from the Ostrava Beach Open with medals around their neck.

The reigning world champions from Canada were swept 21-15, 21-16 in 37 minutes by Brazil's Barbara Seixas de Freitas and Carolina Solbert Salgado in the bronze-medal match on Sunday in the Czech Republic.

Pavan and Humana-Paredes leave the 4-star event with a 4-3 win-loss record and $8,000 US.

Joana Heidrich and Anouk Vergé-Dépré of Switzerland were to face Americans Sarah Sponcil and Kelly Claes in the gold-medal match.

WATCH | Canada vs. Brazil, bronze-medal match:

The Swiss duo defeated Pavan and Humana-Paredes 21-19, 21-18 in Saturday's semifinals.

"They are the world champions and I think they always come back from difficult moments," Verge-Depre told Volleyball World after her and Heidrich's first career win over the Canadians. "So we needed to stay very focused and I think we managed that."

2-win week against Dutch

Pavan and Humana-Paredes advanced to the playoff rounds after scoring straight-set victories on Friday against Miki Ishii and Megumi Murakimi of Japan (21-14, 21-13) and Brazil's Taiana Lima and Talita Da Rocha Antunes (21-13, 21-14.)

A three-set victory to begin Saturday's action was the second time the Canadians were taken the distance by Dutch tandem Katja Stam and Raïsa Schoon in Ostrava after Canada prevailed 2-1 on Thursday.

Ninth-seeded Sponcil and Claes downed Seixas and Carol Solberg 21-15, 21-16 in the semifinals.

"We played the Brazilians in Qatar, so we had a good idea going into the match. They are a really good serving team," Claes said. "They make really good moves on block-defence, so we were just trying to stay patient, control what we could control and kind of chipped away.

"We try to do a really good job of allowing each other's strengths to shine when we play, and we got to do that in this match," said Claes.