posted Sep 25th, 2008 - The NSL News goes back to the NSL Playoffs event of the Florida Skydiving League last weekend at Skydive City where the first part of the meet story left out the Rookie Class competition.

It was a very special situation in the Rookie Class since three FSL lineups had signed up for the first time in the history of the Florida Skydiving League. Only the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2004 had five teams competing in this competition class, and four of these lineups were participants of the Norwegian Basic Camp in DeLand.

Other than that, the Florida Skydiving League had only one Rookie Class team in the 2006 season and two teams in the 2007 season. The Rookie Class participation has slowly increased over the years in Florida and came to a peak last weekend.

It was also a very competitive event in Z-Hills, as the scores show. All three teams posted averages above 10.0 after six rounds, and the two lineups that competed already earlier this year, Cold Turkey and Evolution Miami, both finished with new record averages.

Cold Turkey from DeLand attended the team's third meet of the 2008 season with the same lineup (Fraser Feltner - Center Outside, Renee Power - Point, Jim Prochaska - Center Inside and Hal Spence - Tail, Bill Schmidt was on camera in Z-Hills). The progression has been very consistent (8.6 - 10.8 - 12.3) and promises great chances to bring back to DeLand the Rookie Class title at the NSL Championship 2008 in November. Mile High Mayhem took the trophy and gold medals to Colorado last year.

Cold Turkey did not have the greatest start. However, it was still a surprise for the DeLand team to see Skydive Sebastian's lineup, the SkyHookers (Kevin Dalton - Center Inside, Rebecca Minkin - Tail, Jared Russell - Center Outside, Yvonne Saa - Point, with Marcus Lucas on camera), in first place after Round 1 and Evolution Miami tied with Cold Turkey in 2nd place.

It was probably even more surprising when the Cold Turkey members delivered well with a 17-pointer in Round 2 and found themselves still only in second place. This 17-pointer, which is now on NSL-TV, was a new Cold Turkey record highscore for a single round. It was even the highest Rookie Class score in the history of the Florida Skydiving League.

However, the lineup from Sebastian kept up with a 16-pointer, lost only one point and was still up by one point after two rounds. There was still work ahead for the DeLand team - it was a meet in the Rookie Class.

The SkyHookers lineup was not new to the Florida Skydiving League competition, even though it was a new team name. Kevin Dalton was the Center Outside for the Sebastian Sidewinders in the Rookie Class at the FSL May meet. Yvonne Saa had competed with Evolution Miami in July and August.

Rebecca Minkin even had an 8.2 experience in the A Class after her competition with Airplay at the FSL May meet in Sebastian. She just recently completed her AFF Instructor course successfully, and a quite exciting video of her AFF experience has been circulating in the skydiving comunity. Only Jared Russell was new to the Florida Skydiving League.

It was still a surprise that the Sebastian lineup was able to keep up with Cold Turkey. However, the DeLand team eventually got serious and managed to win the Rookie Class competition at Skydve City by 12 points after six rounds.

The SkyHookers may not have paid much attention to the third Rookie Class team when they were chasing Cold Turkey. Evolution Miami (Lourdes Coello - Tail, Brian Feero - Center Outside, Danny Guida - Center Inside, Caroline Prevost - Point, with Alex Uriarte on camera) had not posted or tied a highscore throughout the first three rounds but had quietly remained very close to the two other Rookie Class teams.

The SkyHookers all of a sudden found themselves in a tight race with the team from Skydive Miami when Cold Turkey finally pulled away. The Sebastian team had worked out a 4-point lead over Evolution after the first three rounds, however, the Miami team turned it all completely around in the second half of the meet.

It became more exciting, round by round, and both teams eventually ended up tied in second place with 10.3 averages each. Three of the Evolution members (Lourdes Coello, Brian Feero, Danny Guida) had already attended the FSL meets in June, July and August (5.0 - 3.3 - 4.6) and the last two ones with Yvonne Saa who was now in the Sebastian lineup.

Skydive Miami's AFF Instructor Caroline Prevost took Yvonne Saa's Point slot at Skydive City and helped the Evolution 3-way to get to a new performance and scoring level. The 10.3 average is obviously a new 4-way world compared to the previous scores.

The recent personnel changes turned out to work very well for all involved teams. Each of the FSL Rookie Class teams finished with new personal and team record scores.

All three teams are still holding the top positions of the Rookie Class leaderboard at the moment.