CSL MEET #3 August 11, 2007 - Mile High Skydiving Center

The 3rd meet of the season was a great success. All five teams completed 6 rounds mid-afternoon without any weather or operational holds.

Mayhem proves the power of coaching and dedication as a team. For perspective, 2006’s national leader in the Rookie Class, CK1 Snatch Force, scored 8.3 on a best of 3. Mayhem’s 9.8 score on the 3rd meet this season, puts them over a point ahead of the 2006 national leader, and quite possibly will give them the highest average for any rookie team nationally in 2007? Knock on wood, the season is not over!

The two new Air Force teams for 2007, Air Force Mojo and Air Force Vertigo also competed in the rookie class, and both teams showed great potential with very few team jumps together. Expect 2008 to have very high scores in the AA class if these teams continue to compete.

The intermediate AA class had two teams compete. Air Force Invictus and Revolution. Invictus is the Air Force sponsored “Wings of Blue” team. Revolution is a group of college students self financed with no sponsorships.

Revolution did not improve their average for the 3rd meet, which is not surprising considering their school commitments over the summer did not allow any training as each player traveled overseas. Now that the team is back together and able to train, their scores should improve.

Air Force Invictus increased from an 8.3 to an 11 point average from the 1st meet to the 3rd meet. If they continue with the 11 point average, their season long average will put them in the top 10 nationally. Round 3's draw featured all random formations, Q, E, O, F. This round was the deal breaker for Revolution as they scored very poorly due to sloppy and rushed formation building, whereas Invictus harnessed the power of the round to take a 20 point score on that round. To show the power of random builds, if round three’s scores were to be omitted from the competition,  Invictus’s 11 point average would have been an 8.8, and Revolution’s 6.8 average would have been a 6.2. Round three opened the gap between the two teams from a 2 point difference to a 5 point difference.

If Revolution wants to improve, they must harness their randoms, as their blocks are surprisingly quick considering they don’t have full time coaching. Their learning curriculum consists of dedicated research and watching video of world champions then self-evaluating their performance. They have the discipline to learn from others, to keep their blocks tight, to cross reference, they just now need the precision to clean up their randoms.

If Invictus wants to score a 10+ average in future competitions as their Air Force predecessors have, they will have to be either very lucky and get a fast random round like they did this meet – or improve their blocks – as their block work still is sub 10. But, if they are lucky enough to get a random round, and they can harness an 11 point block average, they just might score 15+ with the combination of luck and talent, making them a national leader.

CSL MEET #2 June 16, 2007 - Mile High Skydiving Center

CSL MEET #1 May 12, 2007 - Mile High Skydiving Center

The Colorado Skydiving League opened its 2007 season last weekend, with four teams competing on what was forecast to be a beautiful Colorado day, but like all things involving weather – not all things went perfect.

With imperfection comes lessons learned, and two teams learned how to climb out of an Otter in a take-off like climb with engines at full throttle. The pilot was navigating an afternoon cloud, and on jumprun saw the opportunity to climb from 7,000 to something greater. Seeing the light go green while hearing engines rev up and the nose rise, certainly is unexpected – however the teams still pulled off excellent exits and did not let the distraction disturb the dive.

Even with the climb on jumprun, Round 3 yielded only 27 seconds of working time for two of the teams. All AA Class teams were judged with 27 seconds of working time, extrapolated to 35 seconds for the sake of national averages. Unfortunately, often teams pick up speed after the first page, and extrapolating the time out to 35 seconds probably gives a disadvantage. However, Mother Nature has her way of controlling exit altitudes.

Other lessons learned involved the rules pertaining to blocks. There was a judging question as to "grip switches" for the completion of a block. Being that the COSL players had different understandings of the rules, we highlight this judging rule in the meet report. Upon doing research, the following rules allow contact between the pieces, as long as proper and no additional grips are held within each piece/subgroup):

3.3.6. Contact or grips are allowed between subgroups during the inter.

3.3.7. Where subgroups are shown, they must remain intact as a subgroup with only the depicted grips.

3.3.8. Assisting handholds on other jumpers or their equipment within a subgroup or a scoring formation are not permitted.

The season opened with two teams returning from 2006. Mile High Levitation (1th place at the USPA Nationals 2006 in the AA/Intermediate Class, 11th place in the NSL 2006 Rankings of the AA Class) returned for 2007, although with alternate fliers competing at the first meet. The line-up last weekend consisted of Glen Frank (Point), Mike Pridgen (Ooutside Center), Steve Zeder (Inside Center), Kevin Chapman (Tail) and Byron Dormire (Video). Levitation fnished in 2nd place.

Mile High Mayhem returned for 2007 with a new player aboard, and also with a new coach: Rusty Lewis of the International Bodyflight Association, the training and rating organization linked to Skyventure windtunnels. Having the head tunnel instructor trainer and arguably one of the best tunnel fliers in the industry as coach must have been valuable to the team. Mayhem scored more points in the first two rounds of the meet than at all of the meets and rounds in 2006. It is obvious that this team is ready to finish in high rankings this year.

Two new teams appeared for the 2007 season. The Air Force Academy's "Wings of Blue" delivered their latest installment to the well known cadet team legacy: "Invictus". Cadet Eric Towal, Cadet Tadd Lahnert, Cadet Chris Oppenlander, Cadet Zach Alexander and MSgt Ted Burgess on camera competed in the AA/Intermediate Class and took the 1st place. Their command of "K-A-N-18" in Round 4 allowed them to score three points higher than the next team. While they ran head to head with Mile High Levitation throughout the meet, Round 4 allowed Invictus to take and keep the lead.

Our last new team for 2007, Revolution, competed in the AA/Intermediate Class, as well. Revolution consists of Ben Worrall (Outside Center), Chris Romano (Inside Center), Kyle Smith (Tail), Pat Roks (Point) and Travis Roth (Camera).

Revolution ended up in 3rd place of the three COSL teams in the AA Class. However, the team's scores were within shooting distance of the 1st place team in each round, except for Round 4 where Invictus dominated the field. In fact, Revolution tied the other two teams in Round 5 and showed how close the cmpetition will be this season in Colorado.

But scores alone do not do the Revolution story justice. The teams that outscored Revolution by about a 2-point margin per jump have either a few years of jumping experience, or the support of the highly respected and highly successful "Wings of Blue franchise".

Revolution on the other hand is a brand new team. In fact, the team was already manifested for the first round before finalizing the name. So, what are the experience levels of the team members? Well, how about less than 100 jumps, except for one player who has around 200 jumps, and the training budget is financed by college student earnings.

Revolution went to Arizona during spring break and flew for a few hours in the tunnel with Airspeed coaches. With 15 training jumps prior to the meet, relatively little 4-way knowledge and experience, their almost 7-point average was an impressive showing.

Team members commented at a celebratory dinner: "Considering the first time we saw that block was on a DVD last night, we thought we spun it quite well. We had no clue what it would look like from our slot's perspective until the first time we turned it."

Benjamin Worrall, Outside Center, has analyzed the team's scores and commented that their time to complete the blocks they have practiced is a second faster than the team's random work. With this knowledge, Revolution has already outlined a training program to work on the individual flying skills, which will then increase the scores.

2007 is going to be a great season for the Colorado Skydiving League. We have very diverse teams in the line up: one team with heavy tunnel coaching by one of the world's best tunnel fliers, a military team with the support and resources of a highly respected training program, a highly motivated team with a few years experience and a group of college students with a vision to succeed in a sport known for high training costs.

The Colorado Skydiving League would like to thank former COSL participant Jonathan Vaage (Air Force CAD in 2006, silver medalist in the AA/Intermediate Class at the USPA Nationals 2006) for judging the meet. We would also like to thank Mile High Skydiving for an efficient and well run day for the COSL. Teams mentioned that the support of the DZ made their experience the "best run CSL event yet."