posted Aug 20th, 2012 - The same question has come up to the NSL News many times: "Where did the National Skydiving League actually come from?"

Blue Skies Mag asked the NSL News and founder Kurt Gaebel one more time, and the answer came with some more background information for the August issue of the monthly magazine.

It all started with the idea of copying what other sports have had in place for a long time. One of those team sports is Soccer, also called Fussball in Germany. The Fussball-Bundesliga was the first model for a format that turned out to become the National Skydiving League. It took a while before it was actually launched, and now it has been there for 15 years...

Turning Points - What Does Fussball Have to do with Skydiving?

A lot, at least for me, and not only since there are many demos into soccer stadiums for the big games.

But let's begin at the beginning. I am actually talking about the real "football," the game where the players kick the ball with their feet: fussball in German, futebol in Portuguese, and futbol in Spanish. I still don't know why it is called soccer in the U.S. and why the other game where they throw the ball and hit each other is called football...

Anyhow, back to the connection between fussball and skydiving competition, more specifically: 4-way formation skydiving competition, and even more specifically: National Skydiving League. It's quite simple: I was playing fussball full-time, just as hard when I was younger as I have dedicated my life now to formation skydiving competition and the National Skydiving League.

People ask me that question quite frequently: "How did you launch the National Skydiving League?" The answer is that simple: I missed playing fussball. Well, that's not the whole truth. What I missed was the weekly fussball match. Daily training was necessary to be in shape and get better, but the games each weekend were the salt in the soup for me, the reason why I was training fussball so hard and so much. The matches were the fun part after the hardships of training.

So, I had made a fussball career for myself in Berlin, Germany. I was in the best age for the sport and had just made it into the Berlin all-star team when I heard about parachuting. In fact, it was a newspaper article about a skydiving club in Berlin that caught my attention. I had always wanted to do that, but thought it was a military thing only. Next day I visited the club house, watched a Mirror Image team 8-way video, and signed up, together with my best friend. I had seen enough.

That was the end of my fussball career, although I did not know that at the time. It took half a year of trying to do both before I had to drop one or the other. I dropped fussball - quit my team, the coaching jobs, the complete career opportunity, and was ready to put all my efforts into the new sport, which seemed to be much more than just another sport. It was also fulfilling my dream of flight that I had always had. I felt at home in the air right away and could not get enough.

The cold turkey came soon after my initial enthusiasm. It was not that skydiving wasn't as cool as I had thought it was. No, it was in fact even much better than I had ever dreamed of in my wildest dreams, literally. It was real pure flying, everything I could imagine. It was the arena where I felt home, even more so than in fussball. Here I could have even more fun each weekend - and that's when the cold turkey hit me.

It did not take me too long to find out that the format of my new game was all right. I have always liked team sports with the challenging group dynamics and the shared joy it can bring with success. There was 4-way competition and 8-way competition in skydiving, and I knew that this is what I wanted to do after watching Mirror Image 8-ways. However, I found that there was only one relevant competition in Germany every other year: the national skydiving championships. There were a few other minor events, but nothing compared to what I was used to in fussball - a match every weekend, except during the winter break and the summer vacation.

It was a sobering and disappointing experience. I have always been a sports fan, and in fussball I had everything I needed between training, competition excitement, and group dynamics. I missed that in skydiving. I formed my first 4-way team in 1981 when I had approximately 100 jumps, and we tumbled through the minute of freefall. Attended my first national championships in 1984 and was recruited for the national 8-way team same year. That was all good and exciting; however, I was missing more regular competition. I also knew that my teams and others could be much better if we had regular competition - as it was each weekend in fussball.

I watched and accepted the situation quite easily in the beginning, as it was all still so exciting and new. Yet the older and better I became as a skydiver the more I missed competition and the opportunity to measure myself and my team against others. I wanted to get better. I knew from experience that more and better skills in skydiving guaranteed better skydives, just as much as more training and matches guaranteed more success in fussball.

Eventually I got tired of the lame situation when nothing changed and I decided to take action on it. I wanted more competition, and I would simply create it myself. The origin of the National Skydiving League was obviously based on a very selfish idea...

It would still take a while until I would be ready to be taken seriously in the skydiving community with my ideas. I had to earn my credit first. Finally, after competing for Germany at several World Meets and World Cups in 4- and 8-way, my position was solid enough, and I wrote a business plan how to launch the "Freifall-Bundesliga" based on the format of the German Fussball Bundesliga, Germany's professional fussball league.

In the meantime, my 4- and 8-way training had brought me to Florida and Arizona many times for winter training with the German national teams. I connected with the U.S teams and competitors and DZs - and eventually also with an American girl (I have three kids with her now, and we live in Florida, by the way). The plans for the "Freifall-Bundesliga" in Germany were ready for launching the project, but my heart had moved to Florida. My body followed soon, and the "Freifall-Bundesliga" never materialized.

It was no surprise that I joined a U.S. 4-way team right away and competed for the U.S. delegation with DeLand VNE at the World Cup 1996 in Belgium. However, I again found quickly that the competition situation was not much better in the U.S. than it was in Germany. There was one national championship every year. All right, that was twice as good as in Germany every other year, but it was still just as disappointing.

At the same time, I had connected with top teams and competitors in Florida (Sebastian XL with Pete Allum, DeLand Equanimity with Solly Williams, Gary Smith). We discussed my favorite topic (formation skydiving competition of course) many times, and I had found like-minded friends. Eventually, we all agreed to launch together the Florida Skydiving League in the winter of 1996/1997. It was great fun, and the 2012 season is now the 16th year for that first league of the National Skydiving League, which was launched with its first championship event in 1998 (Florida - Georgia - Texas).

Well, I still don't have my dream format where I would train from a Twin Otter every day, take Friday off, compete every Saturday, and rest onSunday. That would only be for four months, followed by the playoffs and then the annual championships in November. Yeah, there would be an off-season before you start with the spring training, followed by the regular competition season with the weekly meets...

However, I - and most 4-way teams and competitors in the U.S. and the world - can now attend at least monthly regional meets if we want to. I don't know if weekly meets will ever materialize in my lifetime. I have to acknowledge that fussball has better resources than skydiving, and it is logistically easier to run a fussball game than a skydiving event. However, we have come a long way, and we are far from being at the end of the road. And I am still peeking at the fussball format here and there...