Gordon Perrin underlined the sacrifice of all the players throughout this process
Curitiba, Brazil, July 8, 2017 - Canada’s top scorer on the final clash for the bronze medal was John Gordon Perrin, but the captain shared the merits with all the players that contributed along this path, a path that finished with the 3-1 defeat of USA.
John Gordon Perrin, Canada captain: “I’m very grateful for everybody that helped the team along the way, as there have been a lot of players that sacrificed a lot for this team. I’m grateful for all that and very happy for these young guys to experience all of these. They can grow into really good players and learn a lot from this experience. Hopefully this will help them achieve a lot in the future. Every year we achieve something new - we were in Rio on the last Olympic Games, we were 5th at the World League four years ago. I’m excited to see how far we can go.”
Stéphane Antiga, Canada coach: “We didn’t start well, we made a lot of mistakes, but then everybody contributed to this victory, everybody played their role. It’s an amazing achievement for Canada, we are so happy and for sure this will be a boost for the sport in the country. Now it’s time for a break, but for sure this result will be a motivation to keep on working hard. Our goal is to be better and better as a team, and to develop players as well.”
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Kawika Shoji, USA captain: “I’m proud of this team for the way we competed for the last five weeks. I think we are the most improved team in the tournament, but we are not one of the best three. It hurts now, but we will learn and come back stronger. There are definitely positives and negatives to this experience, but when we came here we wanted to win a medal. But like I said - we will come back stronger, we always do. That’s something special about this team.”
John Speraw, USA coach: “I’m really proud of the fact that we were able to come this far and have an opportunity here. I know we learned a lot and it will be great for us to move forward - even from these matches the guys will be able to understand what they need to work on. I’m disappointed though with the way be played on the last two matches, because we passed the ball really well and when you win that battle, you should be on a better position to win, but in both cases we weren’t. Sometimes you learn more from the hurtful defeats, but as I look back to the previous squad, on the first year we didn’t even make it to the World League Finals, so for us to be in the semifinals is a good position, and this is a great group to work with.”