By Alan Keck

Just when it seemed the North American Sand Soccer Championships couldn't get any bigger or better, tournament director Dick Whalen has raised the bar.

In addition to 12,000 sand soccer games, this weekend's 11th annual festival will host the first American Footvolley Challenge. Footvolley is an emerging sport that's drawing fans from South America to Asia.

"Survivor" TV-show star Rudy Boesch is this year's celebrity guest, and will be in the festival's main stadium Sunday. He'll also preside over a fun competition called the Youth Immunity Challenge.

This year's NASSC has grown to 650 teams and 46 chock-a-block fields on a mile of Oceanfront beach. For the first time in 10 years, the festival has expanded north of the Virginia Beach Fishing Pier.

"If we had the officials, we would be laying out fields from Rudee Inlet north across the Bay Bridge Tunnel," Whalen said.

An estimated 6,500 youth and adult players from 20 states, as well as Canada, Brazil and Italy will participate in the three-day tournament.

Whalen - the undisputed father of local sand soccer - proudly notes that his baby is already the world's largest beach soccer festival, and he hopes to keep it growing.

That's where experiments such as footvolley come in. It's played in the sand on a volleyball-sized court bisected with an eight-foot net.

As in soccer, any part of the body except the hands can be used to return the ball. The rest of the rules are very similar to volleyball.

Of the 14, two-person footvolley teams playing in the pro-am challenge, two women's teams are from Brazil and two are from Canada. For the men, there's one Canadian team, a couple of Brazilian teams and a team from Milan, Italy.

"It makes a perfect match, and has great synergy with sand soccer," Whalen said. "It's the same surface and the same kind of skills. The only difference is you're not booting a ball in a goal, you're volleying it over a net."

Also, this year features the tournament's centerpiece, the fourth annual Pro-am U.S. Open. Teams from the United States, Canada, Brazil and Italy will compete for a $15,000 purse.

Last year's national champion HRSC All-Stars, a group of local college standouts and ex-professional players, will return to defend their title.

The national championship match will be Sunday, 1 p.m. at the 6th Street stadium.

While Whalen works year-round to keep the festival fresh and growing, hundreds of volunteers put the plan into action.

While the stress isn't fun, in the end it's all worth it. All profits from the NASSC go to the Soccer Complex. Over the years, the festival has raised $750,000 for the complex.

Last year, it brought in $150,000, and this year Whalen is shooting for $200,000.

"It's the only thing that pays for development out at the complex," Knott said. "It's the reason we built (the complex headquarters). Otherwise, we'd still be in porta-johns."

For more information on the NASSC, go to www.sandsoccer.com. For information on footvolley, go to www.footvolley.com.