By Jim Roberts

The movie Field Of Dreams may have been about baseball, but its popular catch-phrase—“If you build it, they will come”—brings to mind another popular sport: soccer. Sand soccer, that is.

Case in point: The Hampton Roads Soccer Council has watched its North American Sand Soccer Championships grow from a modest 28-team event in 1994 to a world-class competition that attracted 482 teams last year. Dick Whalen, the self-professed “soccer crony” who has served as the event’s executive director since its inception, expects more than 500 to participate in this year’s event, which will take place from June 7-9 at the Virginia Beach oceanfront.

For three days, the beach between 1st and 14th streets will be transformed into more than 40 sand soccer fields. (The city’s beach-widening effort obviously has played a significant role in the tournament’s success.) Adults will play on fields 40 yards long and 30 yards wide; children will play on fields five yards shorter in each direction.

What is sand soccer? Pretty simple: soccer played in the sand. A few things, though, set it apart from the grass game, notably a smaller playing area and the fact that there are only five players on each team. And even though, with three 12-minute periods, the games are shorter, there tends to be more scoring. Last year’s pro/am championship game ended 7?2. The goals are also bigger, and substitutions are made while the game is being played, similar to “line changes” in ice hockey. The biggest difference, however, can’t be quantified: It’s the fact that a soccer ball tends not to roll in the sand. In other words: It’s kicked, it lands, it stops. That’s why the most successful teams are the ones that keep the ball elevated.

“Sand is the great equalizer,” Whalen says. The game developed on the beaches of South America, but it was an Italian, Giancarlo Signorini, who is credited with formalizing the rules and officially bringing the game to the United States. He organized a professional league in 1992 and hosted the first professional tournament in 1993 in Miami. Since then, annual tournaments have sprung up in Florida, California, Mississippi and even Connecticut, but the Virginia Beach event is by far the largest.

Signorini now serves as the commissioner of Pro Beach Soccer North America and is lobbying to have the game added as an Olympic sport in 2008.

By many measures, this year’s tournament is already a success. Major sponsorships have been secured, and the number of entries is at a record high. What will cap off the weekend for Whalen is fielding a team to beat Flamilia, which has won the men’s pro/am the last four years and is the odds-on favorite to repeat. He's put together a team of local “ringers” he hopes can do just that.

Flamilia, a group of Brazilian natives who live in Miami and have won the men’s pro/am the last four years, is so enamored with the Virginia Beach tournament, the coach has been quoted as saying, “We’ll be at the North American Sand Soccer Championships, even if we have to walk all the way from Florida.”

“They’re like Meadowlark and his guys,” Whalen says, comparing the team to basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters. “They’re just out to show of the beauty of the sport.”

Flamilia is equally notorious for its off-field antics. Whalen says the team marches to its games, carrying Brazil’s flag and banging drums. And when their games are over, the team is known to upstage planned musical acts on the boardwalk with an impromptu salsa show.

Proceeds from the tournament are used for capital improvements to the Virginia Beach Soccer Complex, a 75-acre mecca of 19 grass fields located near the Virginia Beach Amphitheater. Whalen says 30,000 people from four soccer clubs—the Atlantic Soccer Club, Beach Football Club, the Virginia Beach Soccer Club and the Southeastern Virginia Women’s Soccer Association—use the complex, but few appreciate how it came into being or how it continues to be funded.

“Most people just view it as ‘where we go on Sunday to play soccer,’” he says.

In fact, the land was donated by the city, but the HRSC, which includes representation from the four local soccer clubs, has paid millions of dollars for its development and its operating expenses.

Last year’s tournament paid for asphalt walkways. This year’s event—and more after it—will help pay for the construction of a $750,000 headquarters facility and picnic area.

“It’s gonna be the house that sand built,” says Whalen.

The highlights of North American Sand Soccer Championships will be a professional exhibition game on Saturday, June 8 and the men’s pro/am championship game at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 9. Both events will take place in a temporary stadium on the 7th Street and will be taped for broadcast on cable’s Outdoor Life Network.