By Matt Middleton

VIRGINIA BEACH -- It's still quiet here.

The Virginia Beach boardwalk was brimming with its regulars on Thursday morning. Shirtless roller bladers skated along the concrete pathway. Families paraded toward the warming sea, savoring the calm of early June.

But that serenity ends today, when as many as 25,000 soccer-crazed nomads begin to invade the beach for the North American Sand Soccer Championships.

"You cannot see any part of the horizon that doesn't have soccer people in front of it" once the event begins, said Dick Whalen , director of the NASSC since its inception in 1994.

"It's one big carnival," NASSC facilities coordinator Tim O'Brien added, taking a break from piecing together one of the 100 soccer goals being installed on 50 sand fields.

The event, a launching point for the summer beach season, begins in earnest today, but the bulk of the sand spectacle starts early Saturday. It continues throughout the day and culminates Sunday with the U.S. Open Final at 1 p.m.

That event will feature 10 teams, including the defending champs from Brazil and a team from Germany. The top two men's pro/am teams will battle each other in the final with a $15,000 purse on the line.

Should the sand soccer lay person grow tired of the 5-on-5 action, there will be four other sports on hand. One year after adding a new sport -- footvolley, a soccer-volleyball hybrid -- three more sand-oriented competitions will join the rotation: beach tennis, fieldball (think kickball on sand) and flag football.

But soccer remains the heart of the event.

"Soccer is and always will be the centerpiece of the weekend," Whalen said. "This is the leap into summer. We always aim for this weekend in June when the local kids are still in school and high school soccer is winding down. You can goof off or take it as seriously as you want, all on the beach. What could be better?"

Not much, apparently. With 725 teams signed up for play, Whalen says he expects the event to bring more than 25,000 people to the 18-block stretch of the Boardwalk.

Whalen, the unofficial soccer ambassador of South Hampton Roads, conceived the first tournament 11 years ago with the help of a half-dozen volunteers. That year, he mailed out 10,000 applications for the inaugural event and drew just 26 teams. Now, he sends 5,000 applications and has a field of 7,250 players.

The growth of the NASSC has seen corollary effects across the globe, with FIFA, international soccer's governing body, hosting the Beach Soccer World Cup for the first time last month in Brazil. Its involvement has raised the sport's prestige, sand soccer experts say.

"FIFA is such a strong organization, and it goes without saying that their involvement can only help," said Giancarlo Signorini , founder of the Pro Beach Soccer Tour .

Whalen compares sand soccer's international ascent to the rise of beach volleyball, an Olympic sport since 1996, and both Whalen and Signorini agree that the unilateral leadership will aid an effort to make sand soccer an Olympic sport.

In the Olympics, "Beach volleyball has a beautiful stadium on the beach," Signorini said. "Why not use it another week for soccer? For me, it's just a matter of when."