by Ryan Clark

VIRGINIA BEACH - It was typical rock star treatment.

Erik Red, moments after finishing a game of soccer on the sand, was being hounded by girls wanting a photograph of him. Shirt off, dreadlocks dangling down, Red gladly obliged. He was used to this. “I guess I’m a groupie now”, giggled one of the girls.

Red’s sand soccer team is from Norway, one of the six teams from his country competing in the North American Sand Soccer Championships this weekend at Virginia Beach. Care to ask what Red’s doing when he’s not playing soccer? You got it: He’s a rock star!

“We’re one of the top live bands in Norway,” said Jan Erik de Lange Gullaksen, Red’s teammate and fellow band member. “But keep in mind, it is a small country.” The group is called Babanation, named after a star in the constellation of Cassiopeia and recorded the second-most played song on Norwegian radio last year. The musicians decided to play in this weekend’s soccer tournament because they had a friend that did so last year. “This is a great place,” Red said. “We really want to be invited back next year.”

The tournament, in its seventh year, is the major fund raiser for the Hampton Roads Soccer Complex in Virginia Beach. Featuring 432 teams, officials expect to raise $100,000. “This is a sport in a fantastic location, and it’s a great way to begin the summer,” said Dick Whalen, tournament director for the North American Sand Soccer Championships. “Here you’ve got a sport that’s fast-paced, held in a festival atmosphere, and everybody has fun.”

Music, food and other activities, such as volleyball and rock climbing, produced a party-like backdrop for the athletes, who played a sport many fans had never seen before. Sand soccer employs the basic rules of the sport, but features just four players and a goalkeeper on each team. The field dimensions are decreased to 25 yards wide and 35 yards long, meaning goals are scored at a fast pace, often to the delight of players and fans.

“The whole experience has been very good for us,” said Duane MacNeil, who coaches a team from Yellowknife, in Canada’s Northwest Territories. “We play this style of soccer a lot, so it’s good practice. But we do it indoors in Canada. It snowed in Yellowknife last week!”

MacNeil says he was surfing the Internet when he found a link to Virginia Beach’s sand soccer tournament. That’s when he and his team decided to spend some time in the sun. “We’ve had a long trip, but it’s been fun,” MacNeil said. After raising money for a year, the team drove 16 hours from Yellowknife to Edmonton, then flew to Calgary, then to Chicago, and arrived in Norfolk last Tuesday.

Fans in attendance agreed the teams put on quite a show. “I was here last year and really enjoyed it,” said Montse Dickerson of Virginia Beach. “So, I decided to come this year too. It’s well organized, it’s clean and people have fun. What else can you ask for?”