Soccer is the No. 1 sport in the world.

So what’s No. 2?

Well, you’ll probably never guess.

But, like soccer, it has not been embraced in the United States like it has in the rest of the world.

This No. 2 world sport is badminton, and there’s a place to play it here in Bend, and not just in your back yard.

Every Wednesday from 8 to 10 p.m. at The Athletic Club of Bend, anybody can play for a $5 fee.

”Badminton is big in Europe, and in Asia it’s huge,” says Dave Grusy, one of the leaders of the Bend Badminton Club. ”In America, serious badminton is unknown.”

Grusy says that the problem is one of exposure. He believes that if people could see it on television or try it themselves, they would realize how serious a sport it really is.

”It’s high speed, with top-notch athletes,” says Grusy. ”If people would try it, they would see how fast you have to be with a shuttle coming at you at over 50 miles per hour.”

Like many badminton players, Grusy, 41, enjoys the fast pace and the continuous action of the game. There are no timeouts, and there is no coaching allowed during play. When badminton was introduced in the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992, it was dubbed the world’s fastest racket sport.

Grusy attended the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 for only one reason.

”All I wanted to see,” he says, ”was badminton.”

Sheena Fischer, 53, another Wednesday night regular, also attended the Olympics in Atlanta.

She grew up in Scotland, where badminton is quite popular, and played the sport in high school. According to Fischer, badminton leagues in Scotland are about as mainstream as basketball leagues in the United States.

”There were at least 30 different places to play,” Fischer says.

Badminton is a challenging sport, but even beginners can enjoy themselves, according to Fischer.

”With badminton, you can try it for the first time and have a good time,” she says. ”Little kids can have fun, but it can also be very competitive and very fast.”

Part of what makes badminton such a fast sport is that players cannot let the shuttlecock or ”birdie” hit the ground, unlike racquetball or tennis.

Says Grusy: ”You must have the reflexes of a cat, the speed of a sprinter, the endurance of a marathoner, and the flexibility of a gymnast.”

Yet while the average recreational athlete probably lacks these characteristics, there is still a place for him or her to play in Bend.

”We welcome people who don’t know how to play,” says Bill Boyer, 77, another Wednesday night player. ”Speed and timing is the main thing. There’s no advantage to strength and size, like in other sports.”

Boyer, along with Fischer and Sylvia Hatton, who also plays on Wednesdays, are planning to go to Melbourne, Australia, in October 2002 for the World Masters Games, for competitors over the age of 40. They plan to join a team from the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland to form an Oregon team.

The three get most of their practice during the weekly gatherings at The Athletic Club of Bend, where the participants play on a basketball floor set up for four badminton courts. The sport is somewhat like tennis in that competition is in either singles, doubles, or mixed doubles divisions. According to Grusy, sometimes only four to six players show up, but some nights there are as many as 16, with all courts full.

”We’re trying to work on consistency,” Grusy says. ”Anybody’s welcome. There’s quite a few less-experienced players, with a core group of experienced ones.”

Grusy, a flight instructor who lives in Powell Butte, first tried badminton while living in Eugene in 1984. He says he was curious, and he liked the idea of a sport he could play indoors to avoid the rain. He thought it would be an easy game, but after taking a physical education class at Lane Community College, he realized he was wrong.

”There were people there who knew the real sport,” he says. ”They taught me well, and I haven’t put a racket down since.”

Grusy went on to play badminton as a club sport at the University of Oregon, then played often at the Multnomah Athletic Club when living in Portland. He’s been playing with the Bend group for about five years now.

Boyer got his start in badminton when he was 50 years old and teaching as a philosophy of education professor at the University of Hawaii.

”There are a lot of Asians in Hawaii, and that’s sort of how I was introduced (to badminton),” says Boyer.

”But it’s a forgotten sport here, unfortunately.”

Badminton may not be taken seriously in the United States, but it does take serious athletic ability. Yet as they get older, Grusy, Boyer, and Fischer can continue to play the sport. And they can win with deception, if not with physical ability.

”You can trick your opponent with a drop shot,” says Grusy. ”I use the mental aspect to deceive the younger opponent. Badminton’s a lifelong sport that way.”

And perhaps more Americans will make it their lifelong sport, once they discover it’s more than just a backyard game.