Representative Media Exposure:

Radio - Three month buildup by multiple English/Hispanic ­stations; three week local on-air promotions; live broadcasts from site throughout tournament

Print - National/international soccer newspaper ­articles/ads, brochures at AAA outlets in 15 states; continuous Internet coverage on ­www.sandsoccer.com; hyperlinks to 20+ corporate/sports/commercial ­websites; event coverage by numerous newspapers; electronic newsgrams to sports affiliates; pre-event fliers and applications; pre-event pizza “box-toppers”; tournament programs; event postcards, bumper ­stickers, Rolodex cards, business cards, posters, notepads, magnets and ­stickers; international, national and local ­magazine ­features.

NASSC has been repeatedly recognized by the Southeastern Tourism Society as one of its Top 20 summer events within a 15-state region. CosmoGirl Magazine has also selected NASSC as one of its Top 100 free annual festivals in the United States.

Representative Demographics:

Geography - NASSC participants since 1994 inception have included representation from Alaska, Argentina, Arizona, Bosnia, Brazil, California, Canada, Delaware, England, Ecuador, Florida, Georgia, Germany, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Norway, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Portugal, Rhode Island, Romania, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and West Virginia.

Age Range - Youth Divisions Under 9 through 19 years of age; Adult Divisions over 19 years including 30/40/50s in “Open” brackets

Spectators - Approximately 28,000 individuals in direct NASSC population of players, coaches and families/friends; viewed by additional 100,000 spectators transiting daily on Boardwalk, immediately adjacent to 19-city block festival site.

Family Income Levels - Average in excess of $60,000 per family.

Matches - Over 1,500 games played in 3 days of festival.

By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Remus E. Borisov, Fleet Public Affairs Center Atlantic

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. ­ Sailors from Pre-commissioning Unit (PCU) George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) competed in the 14th annual North American Sand Soccer Championships (NASSC) at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront June 8 to 10.

The tournament is the largest single-weekend sand soccer festival in the world with more than 8,000 players on 800 teams participating. Teams from nearly 20 states and as far away as Norway traveled to Virginia Beach to play in this international beach soccer tournament. ...... click for the entire article

By Christopher A. Vito

VIRGINIA BEACH –– The 3,000 fans looking for a three-peat at the North American Sand Soccer Championships will need to be patient. ...... click for the entire article

By Christopher A. Vito

VIRGINIA BEACH –– On the beach Saturday, all the pieces were in place for a party: Music, food and dancing. But there were soccer games to be played. The 14th installment of the North American Sand Soccer Championships took place with great fanfare and even greater turnout. Crowd estimates by Virginia Beach Police placed close to 100,000 fans, players and vendors in the 18-block vicinity of the three-day tournament, which concludes today. And there was plenty for them to see. ...... click for the entire article

By CHRISTOPHER A. VITO

Shannon MacMillan knows soccer.

Sand soccer? Now, that's a bit of a mystery to her.

The mystery could be solved this weekend, however, when she steps onto the Boardwalk in Virginia Beach and looks out over the North American Sand Soccer Championships. ...... click for the entire article

by Jason Bryant

The past week was pretty slow in terms of news on the collegiate wrestling scene. That is, unless you made a trip to Virginia Beach for the Virginia Challenge/USA Wrestling North American Beach Wrestling Championships. ...... click for the entire article

By KYLE TUCKER

The North American Sand Soccer Championships came to a close Sunday with a not-so-stunning U.S. Open final and one last fling for the new beach wrestling craze. ...... click for the entire article

By ROBERTA T. VOWELL

Soccer, meet summer. Instead of behind-the-school fields, you're on the beach. Instead of bored siblings, you've got squadrons of toddlers with sand pails. To cool off, there's a big ol' ocean. Need more? How about a sassy salsa festival?

The 13th annual North American Sand Soccer Championships will rock the Virginia Beach Oceanfront this weekend. It's the world's largest beach sand soccer event and draws about 25,000 each day. Since the soccer is slightly skewed - hey, this is the beach - we present a spectator's guide. ...... click for the entire article

By ALISHA J. RICARDI

During past sand soccer championships, beach-goers may have mistaken the Virginia Beach Oceanfront's white sand for the green grass of the World Cup.

Or confused its soft floor with the firm clay of Roland Garros .

Today, will they think they're stepping into the rings of Greece or Rome? ...... click for the entire article

Virginia Beach - One of the nation’s largest sports festivals of the coming summer kicks off June 9th on the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. The “North American Sand Soccer Championships (NASSC)”, with a player/fan base of over 25,000, returns to the resort strip for the huge tournament’s 13th annual edition. NASSC is routinely featured by the Southeast Tourism Society (STS) as one of its “Top 20” summer events and has been ranked as one of the best 100 free tourist venues in the United States. The giant charity sports festival has hosted 50,000 players since its 1994 inception. Fox Sports produced a feature presentation of the 2005 festival and what has been termed the “Grand Prix” of world amateur and pro/am sand blasts. ...... click for the entire article

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. ...... click for the entire article

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. ...... click for the entire article

By Jason Scog

VIRGINIA BEACH -- The very name seems to defy logic, an oxymoron on the order of ice fishing or water polo.

But the arrival of beach tennis here this weekend puts Virginia Beach at the vanguard of a game that only officially arrived in the United States last month, in Charleston, S.C. ...... click for the entire article

By Devon Hubbard Sorlie

It's dusk down at the beach. Humvees, graders and trucks roll in to prepare for the assault that will begin at daylight. Teams of service members - wearing covert clothing such as shorts and T-shirts so they blend in with the tourists - prepare to execute plans that have been honed to precision. ...... click for the entire article

By Barbara Cornicello

El festival más grande de fútbol playa del mundo acoge 7.000 deportistas.

Virginia Beach - Uno de los festivales deportivos de verano más grandes de la nación, tendrá lugar a partir del 10 de junio en la orilla del mar de Virginia Beach, se trata del "Campeonato Norteamericano de Fútbol en la Arena" (NASSC por sus siglas en inglés). Aproximadamente 24.000 fanáticos de este deporte, invadirán las gradas para presenciar la decimosegunda edición de este gran torneo. El promotor de equipos deportivos de Virginia Beach "fútbol soccer y hockey de campo" reaparece como Patrocinador-Presentador, liderando un grupo de otros casi cien partidarios corporativos. ...... click for the entire article

By Darryl Slater

The curious locals arrived on their own shore three years ago, clueless about their newest endeavor, beach soccer.

They stood on the sidelines and videotaped the Brazilian players who, year after year, waltzed through the North American Sand Soccer Championships on the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. The locals went home and studied the tapes, eager to pick up the sport's intricacies. ...... click for the entire article

By Darryl Slater

Avery Willis and Natalie Stallings have spent the past three weeks trying to learn a sport called footvolley, a soccer-volleyball hybrid and the newest event at this weekend's North American Sand Soccer Championships in Virginia Beach.

They studied Internet video clips of Brazilians playing the sport and exhausted themselves practicing at Virginia Beach's Ninth Street volleyball courts. ...... click for the entire article

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. ...... click for the entire article

By Kyle Tucker

Funny thing, sand soccer.

Funnier thing, the North American Sand Soccer Championships, the world's largest tournament of its kind. ...... click for the entire article

By Kyle Tucker

The women of Team Canada don't know what's waiting for them when they step off their plane this morning. No one has told them of their royal greeting. They may think they've been rerouted to the latest reality romance show. ...... click for the entire article

By Alan Keck

For several years it's been the biggest, and arguably the best. Now the North American Sand Soccer Championships also can claim to be the first.

This weekend's 10th-annual oceanfront beach soccer festival will host the nation's first international pro-am women's sand soccer competition. ...... click for the entire article

by Augusto Raffi-Angulo

Virginia Beach - It won't be your momma's normal beach weekend June 6-8 for the 50,000 daily visitors sun worshipers strutting their stuff along Virginia Beach's famed Atlantic Ocean Boardwalk What was a basic resort strip just days before will have been transformed by hundreds of volunteers into the10th anniversary "North American Sand Soccer Championships". Virginia sports equipment merchandiser "Soccer Plus Field Hockey" is returning as this year's "Title Sponsor" while the region's pro soccer franchise "Virginia Beach Mariners" has newly partnered as the festival's "Presenting Sponsor". ...... click for the entire article

By Jim Van Slyke

When the North American Sand Soccer Championships started 10 years ago, there were only six fields at the Virginia Beach oceanfront and 26 teams. This weekend, when the tournament takes over a mile and a half of the boardwalk and the beach in front of it from the 1st Street jetty all the way to the 14th Street Pier, there will be 43 fields and more than 600 teams. Dick Whalen, the North American Sand Soccer Championships director and retired Navy captain, had to turn more than 100 teams away this year. ...... click for the entire article

Some teams enter faraway tournaments to prepare for the upcoming season. Others do so to give their players a taste of higher-level competition. And still others hope that, by winning prestigious regional tournaments, they can raise the profile of their clubs and aid their recruitment cause. But for a truly different soccer tournament experience, Dick Whalen thinks he has the answer: Sand Soccer. ...... click for the entire article

by Bill Glose

Virginia Beach, VA - What could be more fun than a day at the beach? Basking in the sun, swimming in the water and, perhaps, a game of beach volley. But the next time you pack your bags for the oceanfront, consider bringing along a soccer ball and trying out a different kind if sport: sand soccer. Sand soccer is similar to its grass cousin, but it uses a smaller playing area and fewer players. Only five players per team are allowed on the field at a time and penalties can remove one of them for two minutes, creating a hockey-like situation. The game flows faster than regular soccer and , though the playing time is shorter (three 11-minutes periods with two minute intermissions), the scoring is higher. The biggest difference, though, and the thing which makes the game so much fun, is the sandy playing surface. The ball never quite does what one expects. It either careens into the air after bouncing off a small dune or it dies in the sand when you expect it to keep rolling. The North American Sand Soccer Championships celebrated its ninth year over the June 7-9 weekend, as more than 6,000 athletes assembled here for the largest single-weekend of beach soccer in the world. As many as 50,000 spectators descended on the boardwalk to watch the event and, over the years, teams have come from as far away as Norway, England and Bosnia. ...... click for the entire article

By Erik Stetson

This year won't be the first the North American Sand Soccer Championships went international, but it will mark the first time the British Royal Navy rolls out the big guns in an attempt to take the military division. ...... click for the entire article

By Alan Keck

Dick Whalen likes to talk about how big his baby has grown in eight years. But when he whips out the obligatory photos, what you see is not a cherubic youth, but 1 1/4 miles of Oceanfront beach covered with thousands of soccer enthusiasts. Whalen's ``baby'' is the North American Sand Soccer Championships, whose ninth annual incarnation overruns the oceanfront this weekend. Conceived over dinner with an Umbro USA official in 1992, and given form in May 1994 as the Beach Soccer Kickout, the North American Sand Soccer Championships (NASSC) has grown exponentially into the largest single-weekend sand soccer event in the world. ...... click for the entire article

By Tris Wykes

Dick Whalen's Monday was full to the brim.

The director of the North American Sand Soccer Championships was up at 5:30 a.m. to read the paper. An hour later he gave his wife a lift to a yoga class, and by 8 a.m. he was at the Oceanfront, where the three-day tournament kicks off today. Once there, Whalen stepped off beach areas with a tent contractor, met with hotel officials, stuffed media information kits, persuaded one of the tournament's professional entries not to withdraw, ran errands to silk-screening and sign shops, and spent the evening putting together a tournament briefing book for his staff. ...... click for the entire article

By Jason Stacy

A group of kids ventured out into the water. A lifeguard quickly jumped down from her stand and screamed for them to be careful. It seemed to be a normal weekend, but the lifeguard was quickly silenced by a crazed parent. ``Shoot Bart! Shoot Bart! Shoot!'' the parent yelled, her voice replaced by a cheer as the ball sailed into the goal.

Soccer goals took the place of lounge chairs and referees' whistles took the place of lifeguard's whistles. It wasn't a normal weekend. Nearly 2 miles of the beach, 14 blocks from Rudee Inlet to 13th Street, was transformed into the world's largest sand soccer tournament. The inhabitants were 546 teams, more than 5,000 competitors and as many as 20,000 spectators. It's a competitive soccer tournament, but also a giant beach party. ...... click for the entire article

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. ...... click for the entire article

By Bob Molinaro

To play soccer on the beach, it helps to be part sand crab and part juggler. Judging from the makeup of the U.S. National Beach Soccer Team, it also doesn't hurt to have more than a few drops of South American blood. That figures. The sport was exported from Brazil to Europe and, more recently, the United States, but the flavor of the game remains strictly salsa. ...... click for the entire article

By Nick Bowton

Dick Whalen might have a tough time topping himself next summer. Whalen, the tournament director of the 2001 North American Sand Soccer Championships, has seen the event grow every year from the inaugural tournament in 1994. It started with 26 teams and has grown to 482. ...... click for the entire article

By Nick Bowton

The North American Sand Soccer Championships' website offers no guarantee about weather, women or leisure activities. It advertises the tournament. ...... click for the entire article

By John Ruddy

Out at sea, the aircraft carrier USS George Washington is used to kicking butt. During their last six-month deployment, from which they returned last December, the crew spent a hectic 150 out of 180 days under way. They launched numerous sorties over Iraq and interdicted ships trying to smuggle illegal oil out of the Persian Gulf.

But now they're on land - sandy beach. ...... click for the entire article

By Bill Reed

As hundreds of sand soccer players toiled in the broiling sun at the Oceanfront last weekend, Shreey Koltan cut a swath through their collective pates. ...... click for the entire article

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." ...... click for the entire article

By Ryan Clark

VIRGINIA BEACH - It was typical rock star treatment. Erik Red, moments after finishing a game of soccer on the sand, was being hounded by girls wanting a photograph of him. Shirt off, dreadlocks dangling down, Red gladly obliged. He was used to this. “I guess I’m a groupie now”, giggled one of the girls. ...... click for the entire article

By Scott Vanier

A record field of 432 teams will test the newly expanded oceanfront as the 7th annual North American Sand Soccer Championships roar into Virginia Beach June 10-11. ...... click for the entire article

TO: Dick Whalen, Tournament Director, NASSC

I would like to take this time to thank you and your tireless staff for a wonderful weekend at the seventh annual North American Sand Soccer Championships. All of you have put together not only a premier event for those of us who participate in our wonderful sport, but one of the most enjoyable family events that Virginia Beach has to offer. ...... click for the entire article

By Lewis Krauskopf

VIRGINIA BEACH - Alexsander Blindheim and his fellow Bergen Beach Boys were on foreign turf. Not only did the Norwegian soccer team arrive at 1 a.m., after an overnite flight, but, belying their team name, the 14-year-olds are used to playing on gravel - not sand."It's very weird to play on sand," the blond scandanavian said. "Very bumpy". ...... click for the entire article

By Scott Vanier

In a joint amphibious exercise, local sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen stormed the Virginia Beach oceanfront in support of the latest operatton: the 6th annual North American Sand Soccer Championships, held June 5 and 6. Recognized around the world as the "Grand Prix" of amateur beach soccer tournaments, the Championships have exploded in size from 26 team on six fields in 1994 to this year's 365 competing on 28 fields. It is now the largest weekend of sand soccer in the world. ...... click for the entire article

By Tris Wykes

VIRGINIA BEACH - The Norwegians are coming. And one can only hope they arrive with sunblock and a willingness to samba. ...... click for the entire article

Move out Nor'Easters and bring on the sand - lots of sand - as three thousand eager sand soccer enthusiasts head to the Virginia Beach seaside as the "North American Sand Soccer Championships" again roll into town June 5-6 for their sixth annual sports festival. ...... click for the entire article

By GABI CHAPMAN

VIRGINIA BEACH - It seemed big at the time. Twenty eight teams with 240 players gathered on the sand in May 1994, despite blustery, cold weather, to play in the first North American Sand Soccer Championships ...... click for the entire article

By Valli Vida Gideons

Four years ago, a small group of soccer enthusiasts started a sand soccer tournament in Virginia Beach in an effort to raise funds for the 19-field soccer complex in Princess Anne Park. The first year, 28 teams participated in the event. ...... click for the entire article

By STEVE CARLSON

VIRGINIA BEACH - Saturday wasn't your typical beach day, which was fitting in a way. There was nothing typical about what was going on at the Oceanfront. ...... click for the entire article

By MARK TAYLOR

Like many people, Mark Monserrat is planning to be at the beach this weekend. But relaxing in the sun is the last thing on his mind. ...... click for the entire article

By LEE TOLLIVER

NEWS FLASH! Virginia Beach has become the national hub for sand soccer. Big deal, you say? IT IS! In just three years, it has become a VERY BIG DEAL! ...... click for the entire article

By MARK TAYLOR

The last thing an athlete wants to compete on is a cute battlefield. And there was no denying this field was cute. ...... click for the entire article

By LEE TOLLIVER

Patti Fidler sat in the blazing sun for two long days cheering for a group of local high school soccer players. She explained it was the least she could do. After all, the youngsters were playing in memory of her son. ...... click for the entire article

By Mitzi Radziwell

On certain summer evenings, it seems like Virginia Beach is one big party. The clubs and restaurants are jumping, couples stroll along the fabulous boardwalk, and judging from the sounds blasting from the video arcades, someone has just declared World War III. ...... click for the entire article