posted Apr 9th, 2008 - It has been a fantastic start into the 2008 season for 4-way Formation Skydiving competition so far. The first 4-way competition this year, the Paraclete XP tunnel meet on February 9, attracted 14 regional teams of the Carolina Skydiving League area to Raeford.

The Valentine's Meet 2008 was next a week later and seems to be on an upswing after the former Southwest Skydiving League split into the Arizona Skydiving League and the California Skydiving League. The 2006 event had ten teams competing in Eloy.

The Valentine's Meet then became the season opener of the new Arizona Skydiving League in 2007, and 13 teams competed in Eloy last year. This year's event had a total of 15 teams on February 16.

The FSL Shamrock Showdown 2008 broke all records, as the NSL News already reported. The participation in DeLand went from 15 teams in 2007 to 27 in March this year. The situation at the World Challenge 2008 was even more progressive, 19 teams competed in 2007 and 39 two weeks ago.

47 teams had posted scores on the NSL leaderboard after the World Challenge 2007 at the beginning of April. There are currently the scores of 85 teams posted on the overview page of all 2008 scores, including the two 4-way tunnel meets. This momentum will hopefully be carried into and maintained throughout the whole 2008 season.

The next meet weekend is coming up with six different events, five of them are outdoor competitions, one is the Meet'n Greet event of the Mideast Skydiving League. Three competitions take place in the USA (Eloy, Elsinore, Colorado), two meets in Italy and Belgium launch the European 2008 outdoor season.

The Arizona Skydiving League follows up on the Valentine's Meet 2008 with the league's April meet in Eloy. Arizona Divewerkz holds the team's Mentor Camp on the upcoming weekend and aims at creating additional teams with the project. The AZDW members will serve as player coaches and mentors throughout the weekend.

AZSL Director and AZDW member Annie Peterson recently invited the regional skydiving community to join the 4-way fun on the meet weekend:

"For any teams that already have a 4-way line-up complete, plan to come out and compete. However, if you are interested in competing as part of the Mentor Camp (meaning one member of Divewerkz will be part of your 4-way line-up), let us know! There are limited slots on the Divewerkz teams, so we'd like to make sure everyone interested signs up before the rosters are full!"

The Divewerkz members will arrange the videographers for each of the four Mentor Camp teams. They also offer help to find videographers for other complete lineups.

The competition draw will once again be posted at the NSL website on Friday evening, 9:00 pm eastern time. Printout versions of the competition draw will be availabe as usual.