DeLand - As they plummet toward the ground from a height equal to a Rocky Mountain peak, the members of DeLand Genesis are faced with challenges. With tremendous concentration, mental preparation and physical skill, this talented foursome maneuvers in and out, up and down, and back and forth into various formations, all during a freefall at 130 mph. Welcome to the world of competitve team skydiving.

Genesis will get to showcase its talent against some of the world's best four-person skydiving teams at this weekend's SkyVenture National Skydiving League Championship at DeLand Airport. Competition begins today at 9 a.m. and continues through 6 p.m. Round seven begins tomorrow at 9 a.m. with the final round of jumping set for 4 p.m. A championship ceremony and banquet will follow at 6 at the Skydive DeLand facilities. "These guys are athletes who have worked hard to get where they are," said the event's coordinator and organizer, Kurt Gaebel of DeLand. Shannon Pilcher, Ian Bobo, Kyle Collins, Dave van Greuningen and freefall photographer Troy Keys, all of DeLand, make up Genesis, which formed in 1994. The group began competing while attending Georgia Institute of Technology, where it captured three national collegiate championships in the four-person formation skydiving competition. Genesis, which is also contending for the Americas Cup Tour of Formation Skydiving championship, has its sights set on a U.S. national title by 2000. It finished ninth in the 70-team field last year. "They came down here with the sole intention of becoming world champions someday," said Bob Hallett, owner and operator of Skydive DeLand. "It's not an easy road." Genesis trains eight days a month at Skydive DeLand, one of the world's busiest and most visited jump facilities. Collectively, the team has made more than 10,000 skydives. Pilcher, the team captain, said that teams with the most experience have the edge. "Right now the sport is such that the number of jumps the team makes has spread out the talent," he said. Genesis has trained at the new wind tunnel at SkyVenture in Orlando. This device simulates freefall by providing 120 mph wind in a wall-to-wall environment. "It's been a really good training tool for us because we can work on our basics and formations without being in the air," Collins said. A normal practice jump gives a team approximately 10 minutes in the air. Genesis spent two hours in the wind tunnel without interruption on Tuesday night.

The first-ever NSL Championship brings together the champions from leagues in Florida, Georgia and Texas. Gaebel, a veteran skydiver who founded the NSL in 1996, organized this inaugural event to heighten the awareness of skydiving as a competitive sport. Hallett praised Gaebel for his initiative. The two have worked together for more than a decade. "With his incentive, and with some of the means that I have available to us, we're able to make events like this happen," Hallett said. "It's quite exciting." Great Britain's Sebastian XL, which took fifth at the recently completed world championships in Portugal, edged Genesis by one point to win the Florida Skydiving League title and qualify for the NSL Championship. But because one of Sebastian's members can't make the competition, Genesis will represent the FSL. Convergence will represent the Texas league, while Mr. Pink will compete for the Georgia league. In addition, Genesis will go head-to-head with other "guest" teams not competing for the NSL title. Such teams include Space Center FX, the current world champion based in Titusville, Eyes on Florida, FXII, the Frosties, ZSpot and Fluid Motion, an all-female squad. "We'll be competing more against the world cup champions who'll be visiting here (than against the other NSL teams)," Pilcher said. "They're actually better than us right now. Their standards are definitely higher, but they've trained more. We're going to go after them here."

Each team will perform 10 rounds of formation skydiving during the two days of competition. Exiting the plane at approximately 10,500 feet, a team will execute a sequence of freefall formations and maneuvers within a 35-second time frame. The goal is to build as many formations as possible, one after the other. The team's freefall photographer films the jump and relays the tape to judges for scoring. Teams receive one scoring point for each maneuver performed correctly, and the scores accumulate over each round.