CSL NEWS from Alan Martinez - Meets to be held at Mile High Skydiving Center

This year the Colorado Skydiving League is going to be pushing hard for a tough, fun, and competitive season!  We’re looking to have four meets at Mile Hi Skydiving Center and possibly a final meet in September, depending on interest.  

The third Saturday of every month will be a CSL competition:

May 16
June 20
July 18
August 15

  The meet fees will be nominal and used to pay the National Skydiving League their annual fees as well as helping to provide competitors with good judges, bottled water, and other amenities.    Anyone interested in competing this year in 4way (at ANY level with ANY divepool, even if you don’t have a team) or even in some VFS rounds of competition, please let me know!  We are also looking for anyone willing to shoot video.  We are expecting great things from Mayhem, Levitation, as well as the Air Force teams!  We’re rounding up prizes right now to give out to winners and top team from the season.

  Thanks for your help and support!

Alan Martinez

Email: alan.g.martinez@gmail.com

CSL MEET #2 May 17, 2008 - Mile High Skydiving Center

For the first time in the CSL history, a VRW (Freefly) team competed! Their scores and moves in the sky show the rewards and benefits that come with solid formation work, even when flying in orientations other than belly to Earth.

Super ¡MajikalKnightSpeedFire!, a new team for 2008, scored 9.6, without a single training jump as a team and very limited tunnel time, beating one of the Air Force teams by a slight margin. The team name, which might remind 4way folks of some of the greatest teams to have ever jumped, is meant to be a funny reminder of the team's roots and the coaches that have coached the jumpers.

Air Force still showed their dominance with Air Force Encore's 11.6 score!

Mayhem is scoring strong, and Vertigo is equally prepared.

KMP, a new team, scored strong considering they had no training prior and are just joining the 4way league without any coaching thus far.

It was a great meet!

CSL MEET #1 April 12, 2008 - Mile High Skydiving Center

The 1st meet of the CSL for the 2008 season was a success and failure at the same time.

Although the typical debrief system requires participants to talk about the positive first, let’s just get the negative out of the way… THE WEATHER WAS NOT OUR FRIEND. The CSL got winded out.

On to the positive and success.

Mayhem returns, but has opted to compete at the “A” class level. They scored 10 and 6 on the two rounds before the wind came in, however the 6 is not indicative of their flying ability, but instead a bit of camera flying mishap on exit. Rusty Lewis from Skyventure filled in for Russ Moran, but the rest of the 2007 and 2008 teammates remained intact.

The Replacements, a new team for 2008, earned their name when most of the founding members were replaced by fill-in teammates. Helaine Rumaner, Travis Roth (CSL Organizer), Lisa Bush (USAFA) and Kevin Chapman were filmed by Brad Cole (Skyventure Colorado).

On their first jump ever as a team, Replacements scored 9 points, just one shy of the Mayhem score! However the second jump proved it could be just luck as the round two score was 0 due to confusion after a busted point. Unfortunately the working time was reduced due to cloud cover so the team never communicated what needed to be done to restore after the incorrect key. Replacements could prove to be a solid team for 2008!

Two new throw together Rookie teams, “Sounds Good” and “McLovin” both scored a .5 average with only two jumps each – however the members of these teams did not even know what a point, random, or block was 12 hours prior to the meet. Glenn Frank (Perris Katalyst, 2007 2nd place Open Class) and Charlie Riordan (Revolution, 2007 2nd place Open Class Collegiate Champions) acted as informal player coaches bringing these new skydivers up to speed. USAF Academy cadets, jumping as civilians, rounded out the teams with Michael Dobbs, Steve Elliott, Ryan White, Austin Baker, Jordan Craft, and Allen Dunn. Ben Worrall, (Revolution, 2007 2nd place Open Class Collegiate Champions), flew camera for both teams on back to back loads making him the “Sounds Good, McLovin guy”.

Tunnel Training - a Dream Come True!

As league organizer, a dream finally came true. A tunnel and sky partnership where the CSL and it’s participants were able to bring in new fresh rookie skydivers and train them to the point they were excited to participate.
On the plane ride to altitude, the day after the CSL meet, a Tandem instructor pointed to the 4way team on the plane and was overheard saying: “Those jackasses were dirt diving in the bagel café this morning.” It could be a new start in 2008, let us see what happens!

Ben Worrall wrote this story for the CSL/NSL about the tunnel training that was part of our 1st meet:

            Prior to the first CSL meet of the season, several 4-way flyers from the area conducted an evening 4-way skills seminar to help prepare new teams for the competition.  This seminar was conducted by Ben Worrall and Charlie Riordan (both members of 2007 CSL team Revolution) as well as AFF-I Alan Martinez and CSL Organizer Travis Roth. 
The emphasis of this seminar was to inform new jumpers of the techniques, strategies, and concepts behind 4-way formation skydiving.  Of the 7 individuals participating in the seminar, four continued this training by flying in the Skyventure Colorado wind tunnel as part of the full seminar.  The majority of the participants had just over 50 jumps, and had little to no 4-way experience prior to the seminar.

            The evening began with a brief introduction to the basics of 4-way formation skydiving.  The individuals were exposed to videos of some of the top 4-way teams in the world to help provide motivation towards their progress.  The participants were taught about general scoring principles, legal grips, judging, as well as the various positions and their roles on the team.

            As the seminar continued, information was provided to the participants about the specific methods of making successful formations, which was derived from coaching received from Andy Honigbaum of Arizona Airspeed.  The importance of cross referencing and eye communication were emphasized as a necessary and beneficial component of 4-way formation skydiving.  These basics, as well as theory on key discipline, smooth flying, remaining calm, and utilizing the minimum amount of movement, were presented to the participants by means of drills and student involvement.

            To round out the ground sessions, the participants were introduced to several of the random formations and more advanced 4-way techniques.  The participants were shown methods of proper creeping and dirt diving, as well as simple techniques for grip management and slot flying.  The participants were introduced to the complete rookie class dive pool, and given the opportunity to practice their newly acquired skills through several practice creeping and dirt diving sessions.

            The tunnel flying began: Each of the 4 participants were partnered with the coaches; Ben, Alan, Charlie and Travis. The coaches worked one-on-one on basic docking, fall rate, and turning skills. Being that the participants had only a few previous minutes under their belt prior to the seminar, it was not uncommon to see them initially struggle with the most basic moves.

The one-on-one sessions became quickly twoways with a player and coach. Once the core disciplines were proven, threeways were formed with two coaches and the participant, with the participant given the “big moves”. Once threeways with two coaches were successful, the threeways transitioned to two players and one coach. The night ended with complex random formations, in legitimate 4 way formation work, with two coaches and two participants.
The athleticism and general ability of USAF cadets, and 4 coaches who studied under the Airspeed and Perris Performance Plus curriculum,  proved that 60 shared minutes can transform 4 complete novices into formation skydivers who can complete an 11 point random skydive in 35 working seconds in the tunnel. It was not always pretty, the tunnel driver put up the preloaded message “Combat RW” onto the control screen to ease the tension, however a few minutes later the screen was restored and the players earned a get-out-of-jail-free card.

            Of the seven participants in the seminar, six formed pickup 4-way teams for CSL meet 1.  Jordan Craft, Austin Baker, and Allen Dunn formed the team “Sounds Good”, with the assistance of experienced 4-way flyer Glenn Frank.  The other two participants Mike Dobbs and Ryan White formed with two other low-experienced jumpers to form team “McLovin”.  With this information in hand, these two teams were able to successfully compete in the first meet of the Colorado Skydiving League, and hope to continue their development in 4-way flying to establish a highly competitive future team in the rookie class.