August 27, 2002
Sun, Sand,
Spikes, and Syrta
YAL of
Hampton Roads Hosts Beach Blast 2002
With summer almost over, the YAL of Hampton
Roads, VA hosted its annual Beach Blast last weekend, drawing over 60 young Greek adults to Virginia Beach for three days of fun in the sun and sand. With young adults as far away as Connecticut, Ohio, and Arizona making the trip, Beach Blast was a chance to meet some new people, and to hang out with Greeks from the DC area, in a more relaxed environment.
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Friday night started off with two minibuses full of people heading down to the local Virginia Beach bars and clubs. With
" Greek time" in effect, the first stop on this bar crawl was skipped in favor of having more time at Crocs, an off-the-main-drag, townie hangout, reminiscent of the movie, Coyote Ugly. It was interesting seeing the regulars deal with a couple of bus loads of better-dressed Greek-Americans, which doubled the amount of people this bar would see on a Friday night. The minibuses came back to take everyone to a local dance club, complete with cages for any brave soul to dance in. Surprisingly enough, no one from the group actually danced in a cage, or trust us, there would have been pictures. The place shut down at 2:00 A.M., and the buses brought people back to the hotel or to one of the local pancake houses that were open late.
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A bunch of Greeks outside of Crocs in
Virginia Beach.
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A long night of fun took its toll on the players Saturday morning.
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After a night like that, it is a wonder that anyone was able to make it to the start of the volleyball tournament on the beach the next morning. Of course, the 10:00 A.M. start time ended up being closer to 11:00 A.M., but the tournament organizers did a good job of leaving very little downtime between games during the morning session. After lunch, the volleyball tournament started to disintegrate as the blistering hot sand started to take its toll on many of the teams who preferred to be in the water than on the court. In the end it was last year's champs, St. Katherine's, beating a team of mostly players from Norfolk in a close
game to cap an undefeated run.
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| The evening started off with a sit-down dinner giving everyone a chance to meet and talk people in a more quiet setting than the night before. After dinner everyone got a chance to dance to some Greek music. It was good that this Greek Night was open to more than just those who came down for Beach Blast. Many of the local Greeks, particularly the younger crowd, showed up, adding to an already good crowd.
Not surprisingly, there were only a handful of Beach Blast participants at the church service at the Annunciation Cathedral in Norfolk. Situated on a beautiful, expansive campus, this church offered something that we'd never seen at a coffee hour at a DC church…..
loukoumades. They were pumping these things out like you wouldn't believe. It was astonishing the rate at which Greeks were cooking up free
loukoumades. If this had been a festival and they'd been selling them, there would have been a line out the door. We'd never met a friendlier bunch of people at coffee hour with everyone coming up to the young adults, asking them where they were from, and how they liked the service. We asked around and found out that the loukoumades were a one-time-only thing and thoughts of moving to Norfolk for the rest of our lives, or just on Sunday mornings, left our minds.
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| The final event of Beach Blast was a relaxing cookout/pool party at
a house in Norfolk. The pool was a perfect remedy for everyone who could barely walk from a days worth of volleyball on the hot sand. It was a nice way to end the weekend, by giving out trophies and sending everyone off to the airport or back up or down Rt. 95. Overall Beach Blast was a well organized weekend giving those of us from the DC area a chance to escape the city, get a little sun, run around, and making everyone feel the "Y" in
YAL.
Click here for
more photos from Beach Blast 2002! |
The Sunday afternoon pool party provided
a great alternative to sitting in back-from-the-beach traffic.
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Read
past feature articles.
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