posted Aug 19th, 2015 - Last weekend's A Class competition featured the same battle between teams from the Northwest Skydiving League and Florida as in the AA Class competition.

It was an interesting draw with several overlapping sequences, which allows teams to compare their own scores with teams in the next higher category.

AA and A Class teams had two identical sequences in Rounds 2 and 3, while two Rookie Class sequences in Rounds 1 and 5 were identical with the A Class.

One of the strongest Rookie Class teams in the country last year, DeLand 3D, had these two rounds to complete an 8.6 average in the team's first A Class competition.

DeLand 3D now trains and competes with new Tail Jimmy Xu, who joined the Florida 4-way community at Indoor Cloud League events before signing up for DeLand 3D. FSL team ZeuS from Z-Hills is the other team on the A Class leaderboard who moved from Rookie to A Class this year.

August 15th, 2015			Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Round 4	Round 5	Round 6	Total	Avg
Rank	A Class		L,D,P	4,2	A,M,21	E,19	Q,K,J	H,9	Total	Avg
1	We Don't Have One	NWSL	9	6	11	8	13	(10)	47	9.5
2	Fun Sponge	NWSL	11	7	10	8	8	-	44	8.8
3	DeLand 3D	FSL	9	6	8	8	12	-	43	8.6
4	Bald + Beautiful	FSL	6	7	9	6	7	-	35	7.0
5	Zeus	FSL	4	6	11	7(-1)	6(-3)	(5)	34	6.5
6	Das Booties	NWSL	4	3	7	5	5	-	24	4.8

Both leagues had three teams on the A Class leaderboard, and the two NWSL teams held off DeLand 3D after the five rounds that all A Class teams completed. We Don't Have One was recently formed by Jeff Smith, who was the player coach for Das Booties when Isaac Bahr was injured. With Isaac Bahr back in the lineup, Jeff Smith now recruited Monica Aikins, Jeramy Eggum, Nancy McFadden and videographer Luke Aikins.

The close local competition between Fun Sponge and We Don't Have One probably helped to push both teams ahead of DeLand 3D. Fun Sponge had a 2-point lead after Round 4 and lost it in Round 5. We Don't Have One also completed Round 6 at the end of the day, while Fun Sponge ran out of daylight.

NWSL Director Deb Correai said that JOES, Fun Sponge and Das Booties benefited from training with former Airspeed and Paraclete member Andy Honigbaum, who visited Skydive Snohomish the first weekend of August. Andy Honigbaum started his skydiving career in Snohomish and was one of Dave Correia's students. Both Fun Sponge and Das Booties were able to add a couple of different exits to their repertoire after the coaching, which was useful for the August meet. The JOES try to schedule another camp with Andy Honigbaum in early October before going to the USPA Nationals.

In Florida, Bob Byrne has been coaching Z-Hills team ZeuS this year and commented the team's performance last weekend:

"Coming into this meet, they had only 28 jumps together, mostly due to the string of inclement weather we've been battling in central Florida this season.

Fortunately, they also have a few hours of coached tunnel time together, mostly at Paraclete XP, but also during the FSL Tunnel Kicker series.

"As is unfortunately typical for the team, they started out rough, experiencing some fall rate issues in Round 1. However, in Rounds 2 - 5 they performed much closer to their capabilities, bettering team Purple HaZe in Round 2, and tying them with a new team high score in Round 3, the only two rounds where both classes had identical draws for this meet."

Zeus also tied local rival Purple HaZe in Round 4, despite a point deduction for not displaying a controlled first formation to the judge before transitioning, in a round where Purple HaZe arguably had the easier sequence with an extra random formation.

Bob Byrne continued with the ZeuS evaluation:

"As is also unfortunately typical, ZeuS' performance dropped off in Round 6 due to fatigue. As the season has unfolded, they've tried a handful of exits, and have settled on three that they'll continue to practice and use at the NSL Championships in November. As a result, they performed better in the exit/hill portion of this meet than in most of the previous meets."