posted May 23rd, 2005 - The past weekend turns out to offer as many scores and much information as it could be expected. Around noon on Monday, a total of 61 teams was already listed in the scoring table, with the teams of several leagues still not on the board yet. The first meet story of the Midwest Skydiving League competition at Skydive Chicago follows below.

There comes a lot of additional information with the scores. The new member of the European Skydiving League in the Czech Republic has already provided the meet scores, pictures and team members of the Czech teams, and some of the meet videos from Europe can already be viewed on NSL-TV.

Important news have arrived from the Mideast Skydiving League competition that took place at Skydive Greene County. Teams and competitors in the USA have to be alerted about a difference between the language of the new USPA Competition Manual 2005 and the language of the new and current IPC rules, which caused significant confusion at the MESL meet. The NSL News will follow up with more details later today. Here is the Midwest Skydiving League with the meet story, provided by MWSL Director Alan Butt:

Midwest Skydiving League Meet 1

The 2005 MWSL season got off to an exciting start on Saturday, thanks to eight eager teams, terrific meet management by Skydive Chicago and unusually fine weather for May in Chicago. There was a great mix of competitors at the meet. We had highly experienced people such as Brian Darnell and Rich Madsen returning after taking a season off as well as some first time 4-way competitors, including all the members of 4-Play. And in between we saw a tight match-up in the A Class between three teams who are very familiar with each other, as well as a fourth that surprised everyone.

Largely due to our short Midwestern jump season and the high training levels involved, the MWSL typically sees few AAA Class teams. However, CSC Steel Breeze with Brian Darnell, Rich Madsen, Carolyn Ernst, John Pickert and Kevin Naftzger on video has entered this challenging class for the 2005 season. Despite a Chicago spring that has offered little desirable training weather, they were able to score a very respectable 34 points (5.7 average) at the meet. They had no MWSL competition, but we will see how they fared against their peers from the U.S. and Europe as results come in from the other leagues.

The AA Class was won by the MWSL veterans from East Troy, Just4Fun, with Chris Whittet, John Lindstrom, Tom Joles, Brian LaDow and Tim Shue on video. Despite a training program that was limited to three hop n' pops, these highly experienced jumpers scored a strong total of 39 points (6.5 average). This happened to match the team's score from its last MWSL meet in August 2004, so all the rust didn't seem to hold them back much. Second place went to Good Vibrations. Vibes is also a veteran MWSL team who had a couple of roster changes over the off-season. They scored a total of 18 through five rounds, but had their round six weathered out.

Somewhat surprisingly, 2004's very popular Rookie Class had no entires at all in this first meet of 2005. But the loss of the Rookie Class wasthe gain for the A Class, as former star Rookie Class squads Nite Hooker and the Pimps and the Chicago Sirens stepped up to join last year's MWSL A Class champs, the SDC Furies with Sarah Lawrence, Shannon Sweet, Gosia Cienkosz, Lisa DeSimone and Charles Lane on video in the line-up. The results appear to position this class as the MWSL's most exciting competition in 2005.

The competition in the A Class was so close that no team ever had a lead greater than two points. There was remarkable consistency among the top three teams. Despite the fact that this was the season opener, none had a score lower than a six in any round other than the very slow round two. And a new team, "Team One Fifty One" from Wisconsin, was only a couple of rough exits from being right in the middle of this party.

The SDC Furies went into the final round leading by only a single point. The Pimps scored a six and the Sirens a seven, giving them 41 and 42 points for the day, respectively. But the Furies also scored a seven for a final score of 43 to maintain their spot as top MWSL A Class team. They will surely need to work hard if they wish to keep this position. In fifth place was 4-Play, a team of all new 4-way competitors. The team posted strong scores in their first three rounds of competition ever, and wound up with a total of 20 points overall.

This meet report would not be complete without giving well deserved credit to Melissa Nelson, Eric Shaden and the entire Skydive Chicago staff for running one of the smoothest NSL meets ever. Eight teams is a very large turnout for the MWSL, and it says a lot about SDC's resources and dedication to success that our meet ran so well. All our teams were able to continually focus on their next round without any distractions. I also want to thank my former teammate, Matt Mikos, for serving as meet coach. Saturday was Matt's first ever meet as coach, so I guess he owes us all beer! Our next meet is June 18th at Chicagoland Skydiving Center in Hinckley. It will be exciting to see how all our teams do after having a few weekends of nice jumping weather.