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A decade ago it was illegal to play beach volleyball at Toronto's Ashbridge's Bay Park on the shore of Lake Ontario. Today, the flat sandy expanse is home to one of the largest collections of beach volleyball courts in North America, a place where thousands of recreational players and those with Olympic dreams pursue their passion.

Beach volleyball has come a long way and, as the 28th Olympic Games that ended Sunday in Athens demonstrated, the upstart sandbox sport continues to gain in popularity as a sexy spectator event that attracts fans well after the Olympic stage folds. The world tour circuit has a high-energy, party atmosphere that comes with playing hard on a soft beach.

"There's been a real buzz about it at Athens and it was one of the top selling events, with sellouts for the final games," said Matt Bijur, president of CoSport, the company handling Olympic ticket sales in Canada.

And those tickets at the 10,000-seat stadium weren't cheap -- ranging from $85 to $125. (The Canadian men's and women's teams were eliminated in the quarter finals, a disappointment for the men's side particularly, which came away with a bronze medal the first year the game was an Olympic sport in Atlanta in 1996.)

From the beaches of Rio to legendary Bondi Beach (home to the 2000 Sydney Olympic volleyball contests, where the Aussies ruled) to some of the most unlikely places you'd expect to see the beach game in action -- such as Klagenfurt, Austria and Milan, Italy -- volleyball in the sand gets played year-round and devoted supporters follow.

This weekend, Canadian fans can see our Olympic team players in action (and for free), as well as get in some beach time at the Canadian Beach Volleyball National tournament in Wasaga Beach, Ont. Organizers expect about 30,000 people to attend.

As our northern summer winds down, fans of the sport can follow the game south to catch the pros in action or play a game on the beaches in popular winter sun destinations. The beauty of the game is that you don't have to be good to have fun and all it takes is a net, a ball and a few keen players.

Next week, Chicago hosts the first American Volleyball Professionals (AVP) event after the Olympics, where medal-winning teams will compete at North Avenue Beach, a 40-court setting on Lake Michigan. The U.S. pro season continues with tournaments in Las Vegas, Honolulu and Santa Barbara, Calif., this fall. These events bring the party with them. At a July tournament in Hermosa Beach, Calif., the rock group Smash Mouth played a free concert while the pros challenged locals to a game.

The world tour circuit is run by the Federation of International Volleyball (FIVB), with tournaments that began this year in Brazil in March and wind up back in Rio this September on the beaches of Ipanema, where the sport is a religion and the stadium resounds with chanting, drum-beating exuberance.

What's not to like about watching buff bodies in skimpy attire take face plants in the sand? That's what draws Andrej Paulik, 25, from Slovakia to travel to places like Luxemburg to catch the action on the pro beach circuit. "It's a great spectator sport," he said between games in the recreational summer league he's part of while in Toronto this summer.

From its beginnings in Santa Monica, Calif., in the 1920s, beach volleyball has developed into a lifestyle as much as a sport, not unlike that other beach pastime, surfing.

"It's not a hoity-toity sport where they make everyone be quiet while they're playing, like they do in tennis," said Ed Drakich, technical director of the Canadian Volleyball Association. "People come to party and have a great time at beach volleyball. They like to make some noise."

Truth be told, the sport seems to invite some eccentric behaviour, such as Australian star player Natalie Cook's fire-walking routine in Athens where she trod on hot coals to prepare for the 40-degree sandy playing surface.

Or U.S. gold medal winner Misty May's lusty tackle of her teammate, Kerri Walsh. "I didn't care if I broke her knees because she has a lot of time to rest," May said after the win in Athens.

For a game that is as much fun to play as it is to watch there are plenty of places to get into it. The Toronto East Sport and Social Club runs a volleyball program at Ashbridge's Bay Park, where 85 permanent courts are marked in the sand for 690 teams and close to 6,000 players.

John Morrison began organizing league play in the park in 1996, just a few years after signs that prohibited beach volleyball were removed. "I guess the city decided it wasn't such a bad thing after all," he said, looking out across a sea of looping volleyballs on a summer evening. His company trucked 300 tons of sand to a vacant lot in downtown St. Catharines, Ont., where leagues now play on 14 courts.

A fall season for die-hard players starts mid-September at the Bayside Rowing Club in Toronto.

Other hot spots for the game are found in Cobourg, Ont., which hosts the national junior championships, and Grand Bend and Sauble Beach on the shores of Lake Huron. Winnipeg got a taste of the beach volleyball scene when it hosted the 1999 Pan American Games, the first to feature the sport, as did Montreal when it held a tournament on the FIVB tour in 2002. Both cities have busy play schedules. Calgary has the VolleyDome's indoor beach courts. In Vancouver, 10 public parks have designated areas for the game, with league play at Kitsilano, Locarno Beaches and Spanish Banks. Or bring your own net and ball to Kitsalano and Jericho beaches for a game of pick-up. The Vancouver Sport and Social Club has 23 beach-volleyball courts on False Creek.

The game, often associated with family picnics and laid-back recreation, looks easy until you try to maneuver deftly on the beach, spinning and diving for that kill and dig shot that can force your opponent to eat mouthfuls of powdery white sand. The game has evolved from the six-player team format of indoor volleyball to the extreme, two-player-a-side standard today.

"Many indoor pros have been humbled on the beach," said former Canadian Olympic beach volleyball player Marc Dunn. "It's a different game entirely."

Under the hot sun, with music pumping, scantily-clad cheerleaders revving up the spectators and bronzed players strutting their stuff, there's a sexual energy that ignites the beach volleyball circuit -- which sponsors and broadcasters have been quick to capitalize on, allowing for rich tournament prize money for the players.

"It's a far cry from playing indoor volleyball in cold gymnasia in Siberia like I used to," said the Canadian Volleyball Association's Drakich, who went on to play the beach circuit in hot spots around the world.

The game's profile has undoubtedly benefited from the focus on how little the female athletes wear to play the game, garnering the kind of media attention that prompted a British tabloid to rate the female players on the sands of Athens by their bottom lines instead of the score. The Sun newspaper deemed the game "the most explosive Olympic sport featuring birds since they dropped live pigeon shooting back in 1964."

Fred Koops, who runs Overkill Beach and Volleywear in Toronto's Beaches neighbourhood, supplies many pros with their outfits and defends the rights of players to expose a lot of flesh on the court. "People think the women at the pro level are required to wear bikinis; they're not, it's just what makes the most sense."

While warming up in bikini bottoms and a halter-top, avid Toronto beach volleyball player Thien Truog, 28, agreed. "The less clothes the better," she said. "Otherwise you've got more places for sand to get under your clothes and you don't want that."

Ironically, the only requirement set by the FIVB, the world governing body for the sport, is that men must wear tops so sponsors' logos can get some exposure.

If proof is needed that you don't need a seaside location to hold a successful beach volleyball tournament, look no further than Europe, where land-locked cities host some of the biggest events of the year. Since 1996, Klagenfurt, Austria, has hosted a pro tournament that's the favourite of players and spectators alike. A festive atmosphere and a lakeside setting have made it one of Austria's most successful sporting events. And next month, Milan hosts a woman's tournament in downtown Sempione Park. Paris set up beach courts along the Seine this summer for anyone to use.

After only its third Olympic showing, beach volleyball and the raucous spirit that goes with it is spreading, and any criticism of decorum is being drowned out by the fun. The last thing you're likely to hear at a pro match is, "shhh, she's about to serve."

Pack your bags

TOURNAMENTS

Canadian Beach Volleyball Nationals: Wasaga Beach, Ont., Sept. 3-5. This is a chance to see Canadian Olympic contenders Guylaine Dumont, Annie Martin, John Child and Mark Heese in action. For more information, visit http://www.volleyball.ca.

Upcoming tournaments in the United States:

Chicago, Sept. 2-5 at North Avenue Beach.

Las Vegas, Sept. 9-11 at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.

Honolulu, Sept. 23-25 at Queens Beach, Waikiki.

Santa Barbara, Calif., Oct. 15- 17 at West Beach.

For more information, visit the website at http://www.avp.com.

Upcoming overseas tournaments:

Milan, Sept. 1-5.

Rio de Janeiro, Sept. 20-26.

Varadero, Cuba, Nov. 5-7.

The Australian tournament season begins in November.

MORE INFORMATION

For information on the International Federation of Volleyball, visit http://www.fivb.com.

For recreational and league play in Canada, call the Toronto East Sport and Social Club at 416-694-6244 or visit http://www.tessc.com.

For more information about the volleyball scene in Vancouver, visit http://www.vancouvervolleyball.com and http://www.vancouversport.com.