posted May 5th, 2008 - The new leaderboard of last weekend's events is already complete and includes team names from Denmark (10), Italy (7) and Finland (4).

Italy adopted three competition classes of the NSL Network (AAA - AA - A) with the decision of the national association (FIPaS) in 2007, and it was a successful move.

The first meet of the 2008 season in April in Casale was still a small event, also due to a bad weather situation. The second meet last weekend in Verona already attracted seven teams to compete in the three competition classes. The new A Class was the most popular one with four teams attending the meet.

The Italian A Class teams did very well on a weekend that had a total of 12 teams competing in this category, which includes all 16 random foormations and eight selected blocks. The sequences of the A Class have three or four scoring formations.

Slugs (8.0) and Adrenalina (7.5) took the first two places for Italy, the Sky Dogs (5.8) finished in 4th place. Exit Strategy from Denmark (6.3) avoided the complete Italian sweep.

Two new Italian AA Class teams, MC2 and Next, tested the new category's dive pool and sequences in Verona and joined two other Italian AA Class teams that attended the first meet in April. Mosquitos was the only Italian team in the AAA Class and finished in 3rd place on last weekend's AAA Class leaderboard of seven teams.

It seems as if the confusing situation of the Italian national 4-way team for 2008 has come to a conclusion at the same time. The NSL News posted updates several times this year and in 2007. The Spin Team had won the Italian Nationals 2007, which usually qualifies the 4-way champion as the national team for the next season.

However, the Italian association FIPaS did not think that it was in the country's best interest to send the Spin Team to France when Marco Arrigo replaced Enea Savorelli. Marco Arrigo is also the player coach for the Italian national team in 8-way, Ex3mo, a medal contender for this year's 8-way competition.

FIPaS did not sanction the Spin Team and announced that the team in 2nd place, Felix Poseidon, will represent Italy at the world meet in France. The Spin Team did not like this decision and appealed to it. The NSL News provided more details of the conflict with the story on 29 January 2008 and followed up on 7 February 2008. The last news story was posted on 12 March 2008 after the Spin Team had competed at the Valentine's Meet 2008.

The Spin Team remained optimistic that the Italian association would change its mind after the team's appeal, which was sent to a higher level, the Italian Sporting Commission (CCSA). The officials evaluated the situation and did not find a FIPaS rule that would not allow Marco Arrigo to compete in both events.

The appeal has not been officially approved yet by the CCSA. However, the majority of the FIPaS members have now agreed that there is no reason why the Spin Team should not compete for Italy at the world meet this year. The CCSA decision to approve the appeal seems to be only a formality, and the Spin Team is once again getting ready for the trip to France.

Felix Poseidon has to change the team's plans in reverse order...