It's WINDSday |May 20, 2026

Celebrating the Power of Wind, Clean Energy and a Green Environment

Matt Whalen is always measuring the beach, making sure it’s at least 175 feet from the water to the boardwalk, wide enough to set up 25 yard by 35 yard “pitches”, each the size of a basketball court, for the North American Sand Soccer Championships.

“We will mark off 65 of them from 15th to 35th Streets,” says Matt, whose dad Dick founded this event in 1994. And oh has it grown.

From June 5-7, Matt, the operations director, and New York-born Lauren Bland, the exec director, will welcome professional and amateur teams, from U-8 to College to Older Adult(50+), from as close as Great Neck to as far away as South America and Asia…10,000 kickers in all.

“If there’s thunder and lightning, we take cover, if it’s just rain, we play on,” says Lauren who has been a soccer enthusiast her entire life. “Running this event, the largest of its kind in the world, for the past eight years has been a dream come true and fills my heart with joy to see the impact it’s had on the community."

The logistics seem overwhelming. “It’s pretty non-stop from Friday through Sunday,” says Matt who has to arrange for dozens of officials and hundreds of volunteers plus vendors, medical personnel and more over the three days of competition. “The pros compete for prize money in what we call the US Open,” he says. “This is serious soccer.”

And for Virginia Beach, it’s serious economic impact. “We have relationships with 40 Virginia Beach hotels from the oceanfront to Town Center and Greenwich Road,” says Lauren who oversees a staff of 15, “and we expect our visitors will fill more than 8,500 rooms.” Add in meals, parking, gas purchases and more, and you have an annual economic impact of $15 million, netting the city about $650,000 in tax revenue.

“We grow by 40-50 teams a year,” says Lauren. And it’s not just the soccer that brings the players, coaches, parents and others, a hundred thousand in all each year. “It’s also a huge reunion” says Matt. “Some of our players started coming here when they were eight years old and met their future wives or husbands on our sand. We’ve had couples that made our tournament their honeymoon destination.”

If you’re not playing, feel free to watch. And appreciate what this pair of energetic fans of the other football do each spring for sports tourism in Hampton Roads.  

Of all the philanthropy generous George Birdsong has done in our area, none might have been more personal than being the presenting sponsor of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Legacy Build for Habitat for Humanity of South Hampton Roads.

At the dedication of two side by side houses in Suffolk recently, he told the audience about his long relationship with the former president who, like George, was in the peanut business (“in fact he asked me to buy his relatively small operation when he went into the White House, but it wasn’t a good match.”)

George figures he met the 39^th POTUS 25 times over the years at industry events. But the most memorable encounter was when George and his wife Sue visited the Carters at a peanut festival in Plains, Georgia.

“Sue thought we would be guests at a fancy dinner, but when Mr. Carter said, ‘let’s eat,’ he took us to his brother Billy’s gas station where we had hot dogs and hamburgers. I’ll never forget saying, ‘Mr. President, can you please pass the beans'?"

Two moms and their children will live in the houses which volunteers, along with the homeowners themselves, principally constructed. Want to be like George and his son Charles, now president of the family business, and support Habitat’s good works in the region? Start here. https://shrhabitat.org

Two of Hampton Roads’ most engaged students of linguistics, podcasters Prue Salasky and Jill Winkowski, love the origin of WINDSdays.

It was in 2020 when friend Diana Burke said, “I can’t meet you on Windsday.” I retorted, “the word is Wednesday.” She responded, “Well I say Windsday.” And I replied, “I’ll take that word.”

“Around here, there are varying pronunciations for common terms like that,” says Jill, a Beach native who has taught ESL and yoga as well as penning poetry and news stories.

Why do some of us say “ruhf” rather than “roof”? Or “Nah-fick” or “Nor-fick” vs “Nor-folk,” one of the topics Jill and Prue, who grew up in the south of England, earning an MA in history from W&M, then spending 25 years as a reporter and editor for the Daily Press, have addressed on their lively program.

“I met Jill when we were both pursuing a masters in Applied Linguistics (scientific study of language) at ODU. We started our podcast in January 2024.”

Check out the website, www.languagingHR.wordpress.com, for past podcast episodes (with such titles as Talk Like a Revolutionary, Gloucester County’s Unique Dialect, and Awakening the Powhatan Language, plus an interview with famed Jefferson reenactor Clay Jenkinson about how we yakked in the 18^th century.)

“Ya’ll,” says Jill, “is a feature of what’s termed the “Tidewater Dialect.” So are the different ways you hear farm (“fahm.”) Then there’s house (or hohse) and so on (“awn” or “ahn,” your choice.)

Prue says another recent episode dealt with African American English. “It was after I discovered that a couple of universities in the region teach classes on that exact subject.” Have a topic for Jill and Prue’s 30–40-minute show? Email them at languaginghr@gmail.com and then listen as these local linguists delve into our expressions, accents, even names of streets and cities. “Porchmuth” anyone? 

Luna Maya has stood the test of time. In its third location since Bolivian-born sisters Karla and Vivian Montano opened in Aragona in Virginia Beach in 1997, the Mexican/Latin infused eatery is now in its 15^th year on Colley Avenue. “You must try the Tamales Luna Maya,” general manager Becca Blount told me, and boy was she right. The perfectly seasoned brisket-based dish atop a corn husk is a treat for any beefeater, and it’s featured on the Happy Hour menu. 

Becca says the sisters depend on her to keep Luna Maya in fine running order, meaning stick to the recipes they learned from their mother and grandmothers, always use fresh ingredients and make all sauces and dressings in house. On that point, the queso, as Bad Bunny would say, is “maravillosa.” And even if the founders are not in the space as often, the art on the walls evokes their rich heritage. Luna Maya, meaning Mayan Moon, is appropriately open just for dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Make it part of a fun night in Ghent.  

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