BY JOHN JEANSONNE
STAFF WRITER
Simple. “Whoever has sand on his back has lost, “said Al Bevilacqua, an event organizer for the first beach tournament sanctioned by USA Wrestling, the national federation that oversees that Olympic sport. The event is set for tomorrow in the sand adjacent to the boardwalk in Long Beach, just south of Long Beach Boulevard.
No fuss, no frills. Organizers will arrange for three to five wrestling rings, each formed by a 20-foot yellow rope placed on the sand. Registration will begin at 9 a.m. – a $20 fee and a membership card with USA Wrestling are all that is required – followed by an 11:30 clinic and competition at noon.
“Whoever shows up, we’ll let them wrestle, “said Gary Abbott, publicist for USA Wrestling and a former Harborfields High School wrestler. “We’ll line ’em up and determine their class by looking at them. Not by weight, actually, but by mass.”
Bevilacqua said there already are more than 90 pre-paid entrants, “from 11 states, and you know there’s another 100 from Long Island who will sign up. Mostly high school wrestlers, but we’ll have seven or eight over 55, and we have six women so far.”
There will be separate competitions for high school, college and open men and for high school and open women. The winner of each class will get “a trophy and their name on the Internet, “Abbott said. “They can say they won the first beach wrestling tournament in the U.S., and they can have some fun.”
It will be like a playground pick-up game, and it’s all the result of a declaration during last year’s Athens Olympics that a beach version of the sport should be added to international wrestling. The theory of FILA, wrestling’s global governing body, is that many nations – particularly the less affluent ones – are excluded from freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling because those activities require gyms, mats, shoes and other equipment.
In Switzerland, they have sawdust wrestling; in Turkey, wrestlers covered with oil grapple on grass; in many African nations, they compete on dirt or sand.
“We don’t have that tradition, but we’re trying to put together a U.S. team, “Abbott said. “And, after all, American wrestling was outdoors in the 1800s. There are pictures of Abraham Lincoln wrestling on dirt.”
The handful of high school lads practicing on sand yesterday praised the sport’s new version.
“You don’t have to be in a stuffy gym, “West Hempstead senior Greg Accetta said. “You can jump right in the water after you wrestle, and there are pretty girls on the boardwalk.”
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