HONG KONG – Canada’s women’s volleyball team pushed reigning champion Italy to five sets but ultimately fell 3-2 (22-25, 27-29, 25-23, 25-23, 15-5) on Saturday in Volleyball Nations League play.<\/p>\n
Canada holds a top-eight spot in the standings and looks to advance to the VNL finals for the first time in the women\u2019s team history. The final phase will be played in a direct elimination formula.<\/p>\n
Kiera Van Ryk led Canada\u2019s attack with 26 kills and an ace. Middle blocker Nyadholi Thokbuom contributed 17 points (12 kills, three blocks and two aces).<\/p>\n
\u201cTonight we are sad because we know we could have won against Italy,” said Canada’s coach Giovanni Guidetti. “This is a great step forward for our team. We played point-to-point in four incredible sets against the best team in the world and we were very close to winning the match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Congratulations to Italy as they know how to play those tight matches, but a great congrats to Canada for playing at the same level with the best team in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Italy outside hitter Kate Antropova had a game-high 37 points (29 attack points, three blocks and five aces).<\/p>\n
Canada led in attack points (71-66), with both sides having six aces apiece. Italy held the advantage in blocks (14-8) and committed fewer errors (20-28).<\/p>\n
Canada will face the Dominican Republic on Sunday.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONG KONG – Canada’s women’s volleyball team pushed reigning champion Italy to five sets but ultimately fell 3-2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[21364,147,21369,5,21818,129,21819,21817,21663,4528],"class_list":["post-31477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-balls","tag-canada","tag-indoor-sports","tag-italy","tag-partial-squatting-position","tag-sports","tag-sports-rules-and-regulations","tag-summer-sports","tag-volleyball","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}