posted Jul 21st, 2008 - The Florida Skydiving League visited Skydive Miami in Homestead for the first time in history last weekend. Teams from the Miami area have been competing at the other FSL skydiving centers for many years, and the number of teams with skydivers who grew up at Skydive Miami has even been increasing in 2007 and 2008.

Pam Manos, stunt actress in several skydiving movies, together with her husband, filmmaker and former 4-way world champion of 1985, Guy Manos, has become a passionate 4-way competitor. She has been taking care of her students in Homestead guiding her carefully into Formation Skydiving competition.

She is recently training and competing with two former Skydive Miami students, Alexandra Kolb and Trevor Cedar, and Zero Tolerance Miami continues a long team tradition with a new lineup. Founder Guido Marti still flies the Center Inside position and is now challenged for more training and higher scores by two eager newcomers.

The Skydive Miami staff was ready to welcome the other three FSL teams who visited from Central Florida: Sebastian Tempest, Teiwaz and FSC Wind Damaged.

General Manager in Homestead, Fred Whitsitt, is still a strong supporter of 4-way competition. He won bronze medals at the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 1997 with the South African team Equanimity. Solly Williams, Gary Smith and Robbie Spencer were his teammates by then.

Teiwaz veteran Bob Byrne almost convinced him to fill a slot for the flexible Teiwaz lineup last weekend. Unfortunately, Fred Whitsitt was more committed to running the event day smoothly and to his management obligations and took a rain check on the Teiwaz offer.

The Florida summer weather usually brings rain and storms in the afternoon. Teams and Skydive Miami management were ready to beat the weather pattern and sent the first Cessna Caravan load with three teams at 7:00 am, backed up by the other two teams. It was no problem to complete the six rounds well in time, even though Skydive Miami registered a record number of over 20 loads on Saturday.

The original Teiwaz lineup (Pam Geoffrey, Mary Inhoffer, Mark Stose, Kurt Gaebel) had trained at Skydive Miami throughout the 2001 season after winning the USPA Nationals 2000 in the Advanced Class. Teiwaz came back to the same location seven years later and experienced the same friendly atmosphere and improved facilities.

Skydive Miami has acknowledged the desire of the local teams to train more and laid a new and smooth creeper pad under a tent that protects from the hot Florida sun. The dropzone now felt ready to host a smaller competition and invited the Florida Skydiving League to visit this year.

It was a great experience for the visiting teams, and the locals enjoyed the competitive atmosphere on their home turf for the first time.

Sebastian Tempest delivered a great 6-round performance and showed the results of intense tunnel training and a total of approx. 200 training jumps. Tempest lost a total of five points and currently holds the top of last weekend's AAA Class leaderboard with a 16.3 average.

Chris Ash (Tail), Kris Byrne (Center Inside), Thiago Murradas (Point) and Ari Perelman (Center Outside) had joined forces at the end of the 2007 season, as the NSL News story on 28 January 2008 reported. The current 2-year plan is perfectly on track. Gary Smith has been working with the team earlier this year. Paraclete XP manager and former Airspeed world champion Kirk Verner is in charge in the summer and supervises the Tempest tunnel training in Raeford.

The videographers struggled more with the exits from the Cessna Caravan than the teams did. There were several exit formations and subterminal maneuvers that were difficult to see, and several points got lost on the hill. All teams suffered a few deductions here and there, while the exits themselves did not cause greater problems at all.

Rookie Class team Miami Evolution, with new member Yvonne Saa in the Point slot, posted a 9-pointer in Round 3 and was quite excited about it. The new team member has a total of just over 80 jumps, and Danny Guida has little over 100 jumps. The highest number of jumps of a team member is barely over 200.

Zero Tolerance trained with the complete lineup for the first time in Orlando's SkyVenture windtunnel before the meet. Bob Byrne helped with coaching. The Miami A Class team has also added some more training jumps and plans to be competitive for the top position at the NSL Championship at SkyQuest 2008. The performance becomes more consistent meet by meet and slowly approaches the 10.0 average level. Top scorer in this category, Mile Hi Mayhem, will probaby face serious competition in November.