By Matt Middleton

VIRGINIA BEACH -- No one seemed to notice the bright green ball bounce away from the sandy shore and splash directly into the deep fryer of a funnel-cake tent adjacent to the freshly erected beach soccer stadium on Seventh Street.

Here at the 12th annual North American Sand Soccer Championships, unexplained bounces and wayward balls are standard byproducts of every game, one that the locals are finally beginning to solve after years of observation.

A sport born on the beaches of Brazil and rising in popularity around the world was showcased Saturday on 50 fields across 18 blocks of the Oceanfront. The game's name, sand soccer, gives away its setting and provides an obvious enticement. But sand -- the uneven, unforgiving and often unpredictable terrain -- is also the very facet of the game players must learn to conquer.

"The sand makes it five times harder than normal soccer," recent James Madison graduate Cliff Campbell said.

Campbell's JMU squad made the four-hour trip to participate in the 10-team U.S. Open Challenge, which on Saturday was the sport played at its highest level.

The key to the endeavour, experts contend, is using foot skills to raise the ball off the coarse sand and strike it with more power and better control. That method, according to U.S. National Team coach Roberto Ceciliano, is the easy way to score and one that locals are still learning.

Ceciliano, who is also coaching Team Rio in the $15,000 U.S. Open, said Americans have gotten away from a plodding fashion that was a loathing characteristic of former tournaments. In the past, players relied on brute strength and the physicality of normal soccer in lieu of the rhythmic, fluid style of play perfected on the beaches of Brazil.

Those methods were showcased Saturday when the Boys From Brazil, the defending U.S. Open champion, met Team Rio, a squad with lots of foreign flavor and four U.S. national team players. The game featured several high-flying volleys and bicycle kicks that wowed the crowd, including many who made a sunbathing home on the makeshift mound of sand on the stadium's east bank.

"Getting the ball in the air is very important because it provides the acrobatics fans want to see," U.S. National Team goalkeeper Daryl Fischer said.

The taut match ended 3-2 in favor of Rio and made quick learners out of the observing public.

"The key's getting the ball airborne," said Kurt Werth of Virginia Beach, observing the high-level affair with son Alex in between games for his team, the U10 Ice Monsters.

Sometimes, though, nothing seems to work.

"This is like chaos, isn't it?" Yorktown's Bill Hyatt told his 9-year-old Blue Demon team between periods of their game Saturday.

Later he elaborated.

"With the sand, you can't pass," he said. "You just can't move the ball well enough."

Well-schooled players also like to utilize low-blasting shots that, in their purest form, ricochet off the sand and bounce into unexpected flight paths.

"Speaking for goalies, when the ball is played low like that, you never know where it's going to go," Fischer said. "You have to be prepared, because it could bounce just about anywhere."

Even into a snack-food tent.