Somehow, one imagines that snowdrift volleyball wouldn't work quite as well as beach volleyball.

But despite it's dearth of tropical beaches, Canada has done well in a sport that conjures images of fit-looking and lightly clad Californians, Brazilians and Australians. And Mark Heese of Aurora, Ont., who with former partner John Child has top-five finishes at three consecutive Olympic Games, including a bronze medal at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, says Canadians simply have to work harder to make up for what geography has denied.

"When we first started competing on the tour, that was always the question - Brazil, yeah, but Canada?" Heese said Tuesday. "They said we aren't supposed to be good at this, but we're trying to dispel that idea."

One way is to turn tennis courts into sandboxes, as organizers will do at Uniprix Stadium for the Swatch Beach Volleyball World Tour event in Montreal, July 12-16.

 

The national tennis training centre and venue for the annual Rogers Cup tennis tournament will be transformed into a makeshift Copacabana for the Tour's only North American stop.

"We do have some beaches in this country, but we're capable of creating our own in a stadium," added Heese. "We've done a lot to remain competitive against teams that are traditional beach volleyball and summer nations, and we've done well.

"We've been hanging around the upper echelons of the sport for years and we're looking forward to making that breakthrough at the Olympics and walking away with gold. That's our goal."

The tournament has been held on and off in Montreal and Toronto in the past decade, but last year was taken over from private promoters by Volleyball Canada, which hopes to see it take root and grow into a moneymaking event.

 

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