posted Nov 5th, 2012 - The Intermediate Class competition at the USPA Nationals 2012 was much more a thriller than the race for the medals in the Open Class, where Arizona Airspeed and SDC Rhythm XP were safe and secure in 1st and 2nd place from beginning to end. Canada's national team Evolution was also without competition in 3rd place, and only the battle for USPA bronze medals between Golden Knights and DNR was exciting on the top of the leaderboard.

However, the Intermediate Class thriller was also only about the 2nd place, as Cosmic Debris of the Northern Plains Skydiving League finished five points ahead of Dallas Pulse in 2nd place - after a 0-pointer in Round 5. Dallas Pulse, TSC Vertigo and Spaceland Liter were separated by four points after a 10-round battle.

It was still just as much a 10-round battle for Cosmic Debris who fell back from 1st to 5th place after the devastating Round 5.

USPA Nationals 2012		Rd. 1	Rd. 2	Rd. 3	Rd. 4	Rd. 5	Rd. 6	Rd. 7	Rd. 8	Rd. 9	Rd. 10	Total	Avg
Rank	Intermediate Class	H,D,J,N	C,M,22	B,20,L	A,O,P,7	8,9	6,F,13	19,1	15,E,2	4,G,11	18,Q,21	Total	Avg
1	Cosmic Debris (US)	19	13	11	16	0	14	11	11	11	12	118	11.8
2	Dallas Pulse (US)	16	9	14	14	12	10	7	11	9	11	113	11.3
3	TSC Vertigo (US)	15	12	12	12	13	9	11	8	10	10	112	11.2
4	Spaceland Liter (US)	12	12	11	16	10	11	11	9	8	9	109	10.9

It seemed to be an almost impossible mission to recover and find a way back to the top of the leaderboard. Looking at the scores round by round, Cosmic Debris did not really score much higher than all the other top contenders, except in Round 1. It was a 6-point deficit for the NPSL team going into Round 6.

Coach Solly Williams, who had worked with Cosmic Debris earlier this year, managed to get his team back on track and bring out the best at each following round. That's what it took to win, along with help of the main opponents who had weaker rounds at the right time - from the Cosmic Debris perspective.

The team's performance and scoring level was not a big surprise, as Cosmic Debris had posted similar numbers at the three NPSL meets that the team attended this year. The meet experience and professional coaching helped Cosmic Debris to the impressive comeback after Round 5. Cosmic Debris won or tied the highscores for each of the remaining five rounds and ended up five points ahead of the field.

Dallas Pulse was also well prepared for a tight battle after attending two previous 4way meets in Texas this year. Rick Duran also brought 4way meet experience of many years into the team. He had competed for Texas with Convergence at the first NSL Championship in 1998. TSC Vertigo, with two former leaders of the Carolina Skydiving League (Randy Garman, Dan Winkelstein), took the 3rd place after attending one CASL meet this year.

Three Cosmic Debris members (Greg Heideman, Andy Junghans, Alissa Olson) and videographer Nick Halseth trained and competed also in 2010 and 2011 and attended four NPSL meets in both years. Greg Heideman and Andy Junghans even go much further back. They won their first gold medals in USPA's Intermediate Class of 1997 for Moving Pictures.

Alissa Olson is the youngest member and joined the team in 2010, barely a year after her first skydive. She had 140 jumps at her first team jump and plenty of athletic competition experiences in other sports (soccer, national champion in hockey) before she started skydiving. John Kretzschmar joined Cosmic Debris last year and replaced Kaleb Lommen in the Center Outside slot.