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Elation and heartbreak for field hockey standouts

Sara McManus comes agonizingly close to joining Mark Pearson at 2020 Summer Olympic Games after losing qualifier to Ireland
field hockey
Tsawwassen's Sara McManus converts this penalty stroke that gave Canada a 3-1 lead in the shootout tiebreaker against Ireland on Sunday night in Dublin. The host country rallied to win 4-3 and qualify for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

It was opposite ends of emotion for pair of field hockey standouts from Tsawwassen and their respective teams’ bid to compete at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

A week after Mark Pearson helped the national men’s team pull off a dramatic comeback against Ireland to earn his third trip to the Olympic Games, Sara McManus came agonizingly close to joining him.

The 26-year-old defender was superb all weekend as the national women’s team also battled Ireland in Dublin for its first Olympic berth since 1992. The teams played to a scoreless draw on Saturday and did so again on Sunday — sending the two-game aggregate series to a shootout where each team has five attempts to score from 23 metres out and within eight seconds.

Canada seemed to be in full control of the best-of-five tiebreaker by scoring on its first three attempts — including McManus on a penalty stroke after captain Kate Wright was tripped up on her attempt.

With a 3-1 lead, all 15th ranked Canada needed was a goal or a save over the final two shooters to pull off the upset against the world’s eighth ranked team and secure a trip to Toyko.

Instead, Irish goalkeeper Ayeisha McFerran produced a pair of saves and teammates Beth Barr and Choe Watkins converted their attempts to send the shootout to sudden-death. 

Ireland then completed the comeback on a goal from Roison Upton and McFerran making her third consecutive save to send the hosts to their first-ever Olympic Games.

McManus joined the senior national team when she was just 18 and is part of a veteran group that was chasing their Olympic dream even with little in the way of federal funding that resulted in raising money to help attend a qualifying tournament in Spain back in June. 

The team also shifted its training base to Belgium to face better competition on a regular basis. The strategy paid off with a silver medal showing at this summer’s Pan Am Games, highlighted by wins over higher ranked United States and Chile. A loss to top five ranked Argentina in the gold medal game set the stage for the qualifier against Ireland.

The national men team’s dramatic victory in North Vancouver saw the hosts rally back from a 5-3 game one deficit, that included Scott Tupper sending the series to a shootout on a penalty stroke with no time remaining for a 3-1 victory. It then took an extra round of the shootout to cap the remarkable comeback.

Pearson, 32, has attended the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and in 2016 in Rio.