posted Mar 24th, 2015 - The Sun Path Products NSL News presented the story of the 16 competition rounds at the Paraclete XP Indoor and Outdoor Championship from the Arizona Airspeed perspective with the story on 9 March 2015 and followed up with the Golden Knights story on 14 March 2015.

The Airspeed story did not focus too much on the domestic competition, as the defending US 4-way champions are mostly looking at ways how to win back the 4-way Excalibur sword at the next World Championship of Formation Skydiving.

The Golden Knights story had the US 4-way situation more under the microscope, even though the US national team in 4-way Women has no domestic competition at all in the female category. The Golden Knights are more looking forward to the trip to Bodyflight Bedford where they will meet other national teams in 4-way Women and can observe some of the French Girls at the World Challenge 2015.

Paraclete XP Indoor 2015		Rd. 1	Rd. 2	Rd. 3	Rd. 4	Rd. 5	Rd. 6	Rd. 7	Rd. 8	Rd. 9	Rd. 10	Total	Avg
Rank	AAA Class	D,2,8	4,J,B,17	14,19,P	1,L,20	11,21,G	Q,C,H,22	3,12,5	M,E,16,9	N,10,6	K,7,O,15	Total	Avg
1	Arizona Airspeed	25	30	22	26	25	36	25	39	27	32	287	28.7
2	SDC Rhythm XP	23	30	22	24	26	33	21	34	23	30	266	26.6
3	Golden Knights	20	28	24	24	25	29	21	33	24	26	254	25.4
4	Carolina Turbo XP	22	27	20	22	23	28	17	29	19	25	232	23.2

Paraclete XP Outdoor 2015		Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Round 4	Round 5	Round 6	Total	Avg
Rank	AAA Class	N,2,13	16,O,E,10	D,19,11	C,8,M,9	F,20,P,6	A,7,B,G	Total	Avg
1	Arizona Airspeed	22	25	23	32	28	37	167	27.8
2	SDC Rhythm XP	19	23	20	28	25	32	147	24.5
3	Golden Knights	19	22	18	25	24	32	140	23.3
4	Carolina Turbo XP	19	16	19	26	23	29	132	22.0

This year's US competition is much more important for SDC Rhythm XP, as the Sun Path Products NSL News explained several times in previous updates. Rhythm has to win this year's USPA Nationals in late October to qualify as the US national team for the World Meet 2016 at Skydive Chicago.

SDC Rhythm XP has an extraordinary team history, and the chart of the scoring progression provides more than enough evidence for that. The two recent Paraclete meets added two more record averages to the team's achievements, and all lights would be green - if there weren't one large obstacle: Arizona Airspeed.

The second chart is showing both teams over the time period between 2007 and 2015. Rhythm's trouble is the fact that Airspeed has detected the threat and is still able to maintain a comfortable distance to the challenger by moving up whenever Rhythm could get closer.

There is not much Rhythm can do about it - except for keeping up with the team's progression and the same consistency as in the past. The challenger has to wait and hope that Airspeed will eventually slow down enough to be able to cut into the distance.

Rhythm's next opportunity is coming up next week. Arizona Airspeed will not compete at the World Challenge 2015. However, Rhythm can do once again what the team has been doing patiently year by year: increasing the performance level and meet average.

26.6 is Rhythm's new indoor team record average. There is more than enough top level competition in Bedford to create a peak performance environment, including NMP-PCH Hayabusa, and the next ten Rhythm rounds will show whether Airspeed has to be concerned or not...