WILDWOOD, N.J. - Like royalty, marble-shooting excellence seems to run in the family.

It does for Jamie Miller and Amy Nees, who outshot 66 other children to be crowned king and queen of the marble world Thursday at the 82nd annual National Marbles Tournament.

Miller, 11, of Pittsburgh, whose cousin and sister won titles here previously, defeated Raymond McFarland, 13, of Lansdowne, Pa., in the boys division championship.

Nees, too, kept it all in the family.

The 13-year-old from Palisade, Colo., whose brother won the boys title last year, defeated Heidi Griswold of Perry Hall, Md., to capture top honors Thursday.

Like Miller, she won a $2,000 college scholarship, a place in the National Marbles Hall of Fame, a medal, a "National Champion 2005" T-shirt, and an all-expense paid trip to next year's tournament.

But ascending the throne came with a price, as it always does. Sitting on wooden thrones, wearing dime-store crowns, Miller and Nees had to do their duty.

"Our tradition is that the king gets to kiss the queen," said tournament play-by-play man Matt Corley, as players, parents, coaches, fans, TV camera operators and news photographers crowded around the podium.

With that, Miller stood up, leaned over and planted a kiss on Nees' dimpled right cheek. The crowd roared. Click-click-click-click went the cameras.

"One more, one more, for the cameras," someone yelled.

Miller, whose cousin Carly Miller initially balked at the kiss after winning last year, shook his head from side to side as if to say "no." But then he obliged, standing up and leaning over to kiss her again. "One more!" said tournament President Beri Fox. "Hold it this time!"

So he kissed her again.

With traditions like this, it's a wonder the tournament - for marbles players 8 to 14 - gets any children to play.

But it does. They come from marble hotbeds in Cumberland, Md., Clay County, Tenn., and Doddridge County, W.Va., learning the old-fashioned game in the old-fashioned way, on hands and knees.Once they win sanctioned local or state tournaments, the children qualify for the National Marbles Tournament, held on the beach of this southern New Jersey resort every year since 1960. Though marbles has many variations, the game played here is called "ringer." Playing one-on-one, the children take a shooter marble in their hand and fire it at an object marble, hoping to knock it out of the ring.If the shooter stays in the ring, the player shoots again. If not, it's the other player's turn. The first player to knock out seven of the 13 marbles in the game wins.On Thursday, family ties were all over the sun-baked, 10-foot square concrete courts at the Ringer Bowl. Nine-year-old Amber Ricci was there, playing in the tournament, just like her father did, and her grandmother before that.What year was that? "I played here when I was 14," said the grandmother, Carol Lease, 57. "What year? You figure it out."Miller, too, had a contingent.Decked out in custom-made T-shirts that read "Pittsburgh Enforcers" on the front, with black shorts and black Pittsburgh Pirates or Pittsburgh Steelers baseball caps, nine friends and family members kept an eye on the crowd as he played through the semifinals and finals."We heard that people were going to try to distract him while he was playing," said Josh Blain, 16, a Miller cousin. "If they distracted him, we were going to make them stop. So we had these T-shirts made up last night."As it turned out, the only distractions were the usual ones - squawking sea gulls, carnival barkers trying to drum up business, the tinny call of the recorded message "Watch the tram car, please" that blared from a passing Boardwalk tram.Miller coasted to a 7-5 victory in the boys final before Nees - playing barefoot - dispatched Griswold by the same score.