By John Ruddy

This weekend, thousands will descend upon the Virginia Beach Oceanfront for the North American Sand Soccer Championships. Coming along to play, the Navy and Marine Corps plan to make an "amphibious landing."

Six years ago, a nor'easter caught May and Virginia Beach by surprise with torrents of water and nasty unspringlike temperatures. In the midst of the maelstrom at the oceanfront were a group of athletes trying to play soccer on the beach as wind, rain, sand and anything not battened down blew around them.

Tourists looking down at the sand spectacle from their cozy hotel catbird seats could only have been thinking two things: "Man, those guys must really like soccer," and "Man, those guys must really be crazy."

Today, they still like soccer. But maybe they weren't so crazy after all. The 26 teams trudging through those stormy soccer matches back in 1994 have turned into more than 430 teams today. The event, the North American Sand Soccer Championships, has grown from its humble nor'easter beginnings to become one of Virginia Beach's biggest oceanfront attractions

And as you might expect, just as in many of the area's big events, Navy sailors and Marines pitch in to make it happen. For they too like soccer, and while they may not be crazy, they certainly work like crazy.

"Without the military, we'd be swimming instead of playing sand soccer," said Dick Whalen a retired Navy captain and the creator and co-director of the sand soccer tournament. This year's event, which will bring in 3,500 soccer players from around the world and is expected to draw perhaps 50,000 spectators, takes place Saturday and Sunday, June 10 and 11 from 1st Street to 14th Street down at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.

"We couldn't do it without 'em," Whalen said.

What local military folks bring to the games is the spirit of volunteerism. Since the championships are all for charity, no one gets paid. But someone has to do the work.

"We need the numbers, the physiques, the brawn and the equipment that the military can bring to bear," Whalen said.

To set up the 32 soccer fields, nearly 100 military volunteers will lend a hand. Sailors and aviators from Naval Station Norfolk, Fighter Squadron (VF) 101, Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron (HM) 14 will be there, and Marines from 4th Supply Battalion Newport News will bring themselves and some humvees and 2 1/2-ton trucks. On Thursday, the night before the event, all the nets, tent poles, bleachers and everything else must be taken out of storage and loaded up. The next day at sunrise, though, is when the real fun begins.

"They'll come down to the beach on Friday morning and in the course of six or seven hours, they'll rig up 14 blocks of beach ... into the world's largest amateur beach sand soccer tournament," Whalen said.

Whalen, who began playing soccer in the early 1960s and used the sport during his 30-year Navy career as a morale booster, immediately saw the advantages of enlisting local military help when he began the charity soccer event.

"They all sort of look at it as a chance to volunteer in a nice environment," Whalen said.

For many of the military folks who come out to help, setting up for the North American Sand Soccer Championships, while a hard day's works, offers a reprieve from the ship, the hangar, the shop or the office. It also offers an introduction to the world of volunteerism.

"I think it opens their eyes to the volunteer aspect of life," said Chief Warrant Officer Matt Hampton, VF-101's maintenance training officer. "Sometimes getting people to volunteer ? they're a little leery of it."

Last year, Hampton was assigned to HM-14 and was part of the 50-sailor volunteer cadre they sent to the oceanfront for the championships. The level of enthusiasm was so high, Hampton recalled, that more than half stayed to help out during the event and to pack and clean everything up afterward.

But the military won't just be working ? they'll be playing, too. And Whalen's glad that he was able to snag a fighter squadron personnel for the first time this year.

"I'm really happy VF-101 is playing," Whalen said. "This is our first team of aviators."

Whalen had the movie Top Gun in mind, especially the scene in which a shirtless Tom Cruise and the other fighter jocks play volleyball. Perhaps a team of local pilots could generate the same excitement.

"I said to them, 'Come on, you've got all those Maverick, Goose and Iceman look-alikes running around there,'" Whalen said recalling his lighthearted pitch to persuade VF-101 to stand a team up.

"Well, we did a Tom Cruise look-alike contest," Hampton later said jokingly, "but we didn't have any."

Despite the joking, the military teams are serious about the competition. This year's sand soccer tournament will see the most military involvement to date. Ten Navy and Marine Corps teams will be kicking up sand, competing in the men's, the corporate coed and the men's over-30 divisions. The competition will be tough ? international teams from Norway, England and Brazil will play, and Hampton Roads boasts plenty of its own homegrown soccer talent. Still, the military teams look forward to the stiff competition.

"I heard there's a lot of tough teams out there so we have our work cut out for us," said Electronics Warfare Technician 2nd Class Matthew Ballard at a recent practice for the frigate USS Simpson.

Ballard, who'll be helping out as a goalie, and the rest of the team do have their work cut out for them. Besides the great talent and experience that many of the other teams will bring to the oceanfront, Team USS Simpson still comprises Navy sailors. The ship comes first, soccer whenever. The team has been practicing twice a week recently, but getting everyone together at the same time and working through duty and work schedules is something of a competition in itself.

"Oh, it's hard," said Damage Control Chief Paul Drummond, player, team captain and coach for the Simpson team. "There's underway time and we don't get to practice. I try to get the guys on the stationary bikes and the Stairmasters.

"But we're still a ship. We still have a job to do."

Drummond hopes to rely on his players' natural athletic ability and enthusiasm. Of the 18 members of the team, a handful, like Drummond have played soccer for many years. Others are playing for the first time. What they all have, however, is an enthusiasm to get out on the beach and play.

"I played last year," Drummond said. "It was incredible. It was so much fun. We're looking forward to this year.

"I don't know how well we'll stand up against the organized teams, but we definitely won't let the Navy down."

That's the goal for the VF-101 team. Of course, both teams, as well as the other military teams, would like to do as well in their division as they can, but just taking part and competing have their rewards, too.

"The goal is for these guys to go out and play hard, do as well as they can, meet some people and show VF-101 in the best possible light," Hampton said.

Despite the enthusiasm of the players and their skills and playing experience, sand soccer is a whole other beast. And it's not just because some of the rules are different. For example, unlike professional soccer, sand soccer has no offsides, limits on substitutions, or defensive walls of opposing players during free kicks. Other rules in sand soccer diverge from its grass field cousin.

It's the sand, however, that makes the big difference.

"I keep on telling our guys how hard sand soccer is," Hampton said. "It's not like playing on grass. The ball never ends up where you think it will."

When the soccer ball hits the sand, it tends to do one of two thing: bounce poorly or carom off the multitude of mini sand dunes and grooves. To maintain the best control of the ball, players try to keep it in the air as much as possible. Easy to say, hard to do. Of all the core soccer skills, keeping the ball airborne using feet, knees, chest and head requires the most finesse and precision.

Another valued skill in soccer is the ability to run up and down the field for 90 minutes. Sand soccer is played on smaller fields and for shorter durations ? games are played on grids measuring 25 yards by 35 yard and 30 yards by 40 yards, the former broken up into two 15-minute periods with a five minute halftime, the latter into three 11-minute periods separated by two-minute breaks. But instead of the 11-player teams of regular soccer, sand soccer teams only have five. And then there's that whole sand thing.

"I told (the team), 'The next day you're gonna have some aches in muscles you didn't know you even had,'" Hampton said.

But the aching muscles from playing in the sand and stiff backs from setting up and breaking down the tournament will be well worth the effort. The idea behind the North American Sand Soccer Championships, which is all-volunteer and nonprofit, is to raise money for the Hampton Roads Soccer Complex.

"It's a charity event from start to finish," Whalen said. "We're running (the tournament) for the continued development of the complex. That's what it's all about."

The 75-acre, 19-field complex, built in 1997, attracts upward of 400,000 youth soccer players every year, Whalen said. About a third of them, he estimated, come from military families.

No matter whose families they come from, the popularity of soccer has been steadily on the rise in the past decade. The complex's success, the growth of the sand soccer tournament, and the ever-present possibility of expanding the Virginia Sportsplex (stomping grounds of the Hampton Roads Mariners) to attract a Major League Soccer franchise are evidence of that.

"There's no doubt in my mind," Hampton said, "that soccer is on this huge climb as far as interest and the amount of kids who are playing."

And Hampton, who began playing soccer in 1974, is glad to be a part of it. He's not playing in this year's tournament ? at 42, he's content to just coach. But the play will continue on with his kids, who play the sport and use the soccer complex.

"The only way I can pay back is by volunteering," Hampton said. "It makes me feel so good that what little I can do contributes to the kids."

Military teams competing this year:
USS George Washington
USS Harry S. Truman
USS Simpson
HM-14 "Vanguard"
VF-101 "Grim Reapers"
Atlantic Intelligence Command
Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic
Marine Corps Security Force Battalion
4th Supply Battalion Newport News
USMC Camp Lejeune