Yushae DeSilva-Andrade clinched a fourth-place finish at the Sao Paulo Americas Regional Championships, claiming valuable ranking points towards qualification to the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo.

DeSilva-Andrade was part of three athlete contingent representing Bermuda in Sao Paulo, Brasil, as she was joined by Steve Wilson and Omar Hayward, with the trio all competing in the individual division. Wilson competed in the BC4 classification, while Hayward and Desilva went head-to-head within the BC1 classification.

Hayward and DeSilva-Andrade found themselves pitted against one another in their very first Pool B encounter, with the latter prevailing in a thrilling 5-4 victory.

She built on that momentum, with a 3-1 success over Guilherme Moraes, of Brasil, in her next encounter, with a 2-2 draw against Cornelius Oatis, of the United States, enough to secure progressing into the semi-finals.

With the incentive of each class winner earning automatic qualification to the Paralympics next year, DeSilva-Andrade battled hard against Mexico’s Eduardo Sanchez Reyes in the final four but ultimately fell to a narrow 3-1 defeat.

That result meant DeSilva-Andrade went into the third and fourth-place play-off match, where she came up against Guilherme Moraes, of the host nation, who eased to a 10-0 victory, with the Bermudian athlete settling for a fourth-place finish overall.

Having suffered defeat to his compatriot, Hayward responded in the perfect fashion in his next encounter against Oatis, sealing an impressive 6-1 victory, but like DeSilva-Andrade, proved no match for Moraes in his final pool match, as he was dealt a 12-0 loss.

Wilson also endured mixed fortunes within Pool D. His first encounter saw him suffer a narrow 7-5 defeat to Jose Maria, of Argentina, but he bounced back in emphatic fashion in his next match, thrashing Katherine Smith, of the United States 12-0.

However, any hopes of qualifying for the semi-finals were soon extinguished as Wilson suffered a 9-1 defeat against Eliseu dos Santos, of Brasil in his final pool match.