Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 20, 2015, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE C1 Amateur shares lead at Open / C4 SPORTS SPORTS EDITOR: STEVE LYONS 204- 697- 7285 I SPORTS@ FREEPRESS. MB. CA I WINNIPEGFREEPRESS. COM MONDAY, JULY 20, 2015 C 1 WE'VE been hearing for months from Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Mike O'Shea about how much " character" he believes this 2015 team has in the dressing room. Well, we're about to find out if O'Shea is right. The best test of character on a football team is how it responds to precisely the kind of disappointment and adversity that springs from what was by any measure a terrible 26- 25 loss to the Calgary Stampeders at McMahon Stadium on Saturday night. There were more goats than a petting zoo in the locker- room after this debacle and it will be very easy for the finger pointing to begin for the Bombers, who flew home Sunday wondering how on Earth they let a game they led 16- 0 slip through their fingers. The universal consensus in the locker- room Saturday night - and in the homes of Bombers fans from coast to coast - was that this was a game Winnipeg lost more than Calgary won. The question now is whether the Blue Bombers spend the coming week taking a long, hard, collective look at the gap this loss revealed between who they are and who they want to be, or instead take the easy way out and start playing the blame game. The latter would certainly be the easier route on a night quarterback Drew Willy threw an interception and took a ridiculous time- count penalty in the final few minutes of the game; kicker Lirim Hajrullahu missed two field goals and a convert; and returner Troy Stoudermire had a costly fumble that changed the course of the game and generally spent his night running in circles instead of north- south. And you can also O'Shea to the list of finger- pointing targets - at least according to O'Shea. The Bombers field boss insisted Saturday night the time- count violation was his fault because he didn't call a time out when it became clear Willy wasn't going to snap the ball in time. That seems debatable - if head coaches called time outs every time their quarterback got down to one second on the clock they would be out of time outs on the first couple of plays of the game. However you regard O'Shea's role in this, there was clearly lots of blame to go around. Now, to a man, the players were all saying the right things in the lockerroom after the game, insisting what happened in Calgary will ultimately bring them closer together instead of driving them further apart. " It's not going to break us - it's going to make us," said cornerback Matt Bucknor. " We've got a resilient group in here. Even when we gave up that 16- 0 lead, the guys were still fighting, there were no heads down." Receiver Nick Moore interjected himself into an interview Stoudermire was doing with the media, calling out across the locker- room that the young returner was not to blame for what had just occurred. ' We have to find a way to bury them' Next test of character awaits Blue Bombers By Paul WIecek Continued Please see Bombers C 2 T ORONTO - The gold- medal dream of Winnipeg's Taylor Pischke has come to an end at the Pan Am Games. On Sunday, the Cuban duo of Lianma Flores and Leila Martinez defeated Pischke and her partner Melissa Humana- Paredes. The Cubans took the first set 21- 18, before Pischke and Humana- Paredes fought back to win the second 21- 17. But in the deciding set, the Cubans caught fire and dominated the Canadians 15- 7 to advance to Tuesday's gold- medal match against Argentina. " I think that our level of play was still pretty good. It's tough," an emotional Pischke said moments after the match. " Cuba's amazing. They are a really good team so we needed to play even better ( than in Saturday's quarter- final). I think that we just fell short a little bit. They were on point and there's not a whole lot you can do, they're so athletic, they're just so strong." Humana- Paredes added the loss " hurts more mentally than it does physically. " We played a pretty solid match, but they just came out a little bit stronger," said the Torontonian. " They definitely took that win, but we're going to learn from it." The 22- year- old Canadians still have a lot to play for in one last match Tuesday, when they can make history with a first medal for Canada in women's beach volleyball at the Pan American Games. They'll be facing Brazil, which lost 2- 1 to Argentina on Sunday. " I think it's important that we forget about this match," said Pischke, whose father, Garth, is the long- time coach of the University of Manitoba men's team and a two- time Olympian in volleyball. " And a bronze medal is amazing, too. And that's what our goal is now and that's why we've got to adjust our goals because we obviously wanted to be in that gold- medal match but a bronze medal would be pretty sweet, too." When asked if the loss carries extra disappointment because it was in Canada, Humana- Paredes said it didn't make any difference. " It would be disappointing whether we were in Canada or whether we were in Brazil or in Mexico," she said. " I think it's always disappointing losing a semifinal match when you have the opportunity to go for gold. But it feels even better to be amongst people who care for you and who want you to do well and who are always supporting you. I think it's pretty comforting to think that they're still going to cheer for us in the next match, and that they were still cheering for us until the very last point." Pischke said the home crowd has been a big factor in the tandem's overall success at this tournament, where they had not dropped a set until Sunday's match. " The crowd has been such a difference- maker," she said. " Having all these people on your side cheering for you, it's incredible. I've never played in front of a crowd like this and it's so much fun being on the court. It just gives you that extra person on the court cheering you on and giving you extra energy when you're super tired and super hot and it's really humid. It helps a lot." She said that Sunday's heat and humidity for their mid- afternoon match - which was much more pronounced than Saturday when the team played in the evening - was not a factor in their defeat. And playing twice in less than 24 hours wasn't an issue either, she said. In short, she wasn't going to make any excuses for the defeat. " We're used to playing two or three matches in a day ( on tour) so you can't really blame it on that," Pischke said. " We had a lot of time to recover. And it was a little windy but other than that it was perfect conditions." Golden dream denied Canadian duo falls to Cuba in Pan Am beach volleyball By Ed Klajman DARREN CALABRESE / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Taylor Pischke of Winnipeg and her beach volleyball partner Melissa Humana- Paredes could not dig out a semifinal win against Cuba at the Pan Am Games on Sunday. REBECCA BLACKWELL / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES Melissa Humana- Paredes ( left) and Taylor Pischke play Brazil for the bronze Tuesday. C_ 01_ Jul- 20- 15_ FP_ 01. indd C1 7/ 19/ 15 11: 09: 59 PM ;