Canada women toppled Mexico, 79-21, to capture the top spot in pool A in the women’s wheelchair basketball competition at the Lima 2019 Parapan American Games. Thanks to an incredible team performance, with Coach Marc Ducharme rotating in all his players and getting everyone on the scoresheet, Canada ensured they went into the semi-finals of the games unbeaten.

Argentina secured themselves second place in pool A and a match up against USA in the semi-finals, as they finished the preliminary stage with a comfortable win over Colombia, 67-19.

In the other women’s pool, it was a battle for top spot between USA and Brazil. Brazil put up a gutsy fight against the current reigning Paralympic champions, and despite going fourteen points down in the opening quarter brought it back to within four points half-way through the third, but the experience and depth of the USA proved the difference as they rode the storm out to finish with a 57-42 victory and as top seed in the group. Brazil had to settle for second place and a semi-final game against Canada.

The final women’s preliminary game proved to be a low-scoring affair as Chile beat Peru, 33-28 to get their first win of the championships and finish third and fourth respectively in Pool B.

Colombia and Mexico men’s team, who were both winless so far, fought it out in what was an overtime thriller in pool A. In a game where the lead changed eleven times, Colombia came back from a nine-point deficit to force Mexico into overtime, and then used the momentum to win the overtime period 12-6, winning the game,80-74 and claiming third spot in pool A.

Top scorer for the game with 31 points, Colombia’s Jhon Hernández commented on the Colombian comeback:

“We changed the attack. We did not change players with whom we were already working, we changed positions when attacking and it worked for us. In the middle we saw what things did not work, we changed them quickly and everything came out.

“Like any team of this level, we did not plan to lose. We always think about doing our best, but here we got things at the last second, it couldn’t have been harder. But it was tied, against an opponent as difficult as Mexico, and in the end, we achieved victory.”

The final game of the day saw another nailbiter, this time between Canada and Argentina as they battled it out for first place in pool A, and it was a war of attrition with Canada coming out on top 79-73. The win meant that Canada finished 3-0 in the pool stages and advance to play Peru in the men’s quarter-finals whilst Argentina match up against Puerto Rico.

The other men’s quarter-finals see USA take on Mexico and Brazil play Colombia for a place in the final four.

The Lima 2019 Parapan American Games is the wheelchair basketball zonal qualification tournament for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, with three men’s spots and two women’s spots available.

LIVESTREAM

Wheelchair Basketball will be one of five sports at the Lima 2019 Parapan American Games which will be livestreamed. View via the Lima 2019 Streaming Channel https://www.lima2019.pe/canales-streaming.

*The streaming channel may not work on all internet browsers recommended browsers are Firefox or Google Chrome.

Viewers in USA, Canada and Peru are able to watch via their national Parapans broadcaster.