By Bill Reed

As hundreds of sand soccer players toiled in the broiling sun at the Oceanfront last weekend, Shreey Koltan cut a swath through their collective pates.

It was done in the name of charity and a special interest in a five-member Turkish team, Al Yildiz, of which her husband of one year - Isan Uzun - shared star billing with his brother, Asper Uzun. The Uzuns, both standout soccer players in their native Turkey, were on the roster off one of 432 teams fielded for the seventh annual North American Sand Soccer Championships held on the resort beach.

Koltan was their chief cheerleader, when she wasn’t snipping locks. Koltan is the owner and operator of GQ Plaza Barber Shop, an institution at the Plaza Shopping Center for 18 years, and she and her international syaff have ample experience in trimming the tuffed domes of Virginia Beach males for miles around. During the tournament , customers paid paid five dollars a pop and Koltan contributed a dollar for each cut to the Hampton Roads Soccer Council operating fund for their Soccer Complex at Princess Anne Park.

She did it, she said later, because she wanted to volunteer her services for the annual event which has grown into what Dick Whalen, tournament director, calls the “biggest sand soccer tournament in the world”. After all, her husband, a car wholesaler in Virginia Beach, played collegiate soccer in Turkey, while her brother-in-law played professionally in Turkey for more than 14 years.

Whalen, by the way, is a long-time customer of Plaza Barbershop. With his local soccer connections and Koltan’s recent connection to the sport through her husband and brother-in-law, it was only natural for her to set up a chair under a tent on the beach at 6th street to shear soccer players and fans alike.

Koltan is a native of Turkey, having been born and raised in the coastal city of Izmir. She came to the United States 25 years ago as the bride of a U.S. Navy man. After they divorced, she set about acclimating herself to a new environment. “I worked as a waitress for at night while I went to school in the daytime”. The end result was a high school diploma from Kellam. She learned to cut hair at Kellam’s Business College and then established her shop at Princess Anne Plaza.

While Koltan snipped hair at the sand soccer tournament, some 3,500 soccer players from Brazil, Norway, Bosnia, England, Canada and a cross-section from East Coast communities in the United States took to the burning sands from 1st to 14th streets at the oceanfront to try their skills. What evolved, said Whalen, was another successful sand soccer outing, highlighted by another Pro-Am division championship for the Brazilian team Flamilia.

The sand soccer championships are staged by the Hampton Roads Soccer Council each year to raise money for the maintenance and improvements to the 19-field Soccer Complex. Located at Princess Anne Park. In addition to the $140.000 maintenance costs, the Soccer Council hopes to build an office building and training facility on the grounds, Whalen said.