posted Mar 17th, 2017 - The Shamrock Showdown 2017 is in full swing, and the audience has the option to follow the first outdoor battle between SDC Rhythm XP and Arizona Airspeed round by round on NSL-TV on the event page.

The competition draw and meet briefing brought five of the six teams together for the first time. Parachute Montreal Fuzion needed the whole Thursday for the travel from Canada to Florida, and the big winter storm on the east coast almost came in the way of the team's visit.

Air Adventures is a new 4-way team from Paraguay who are taking on the AAA Class dive pool for the first time. Solly Williams is working with the team, which could become the first team from Paraguay at a World Championship of Formation Skydiving next year in Australia.

Simba has just moved up from the A Class and now attends the team's first AA Class outdoor competition. Coach Robert Chromy has his heart on the Rhythm side in the big AAA Class showdown, as he was also Rhythm's first player coach in 2007.

Laurent Beaudouin, JaNette and Steve Lefkowitz won the AA Class competition at the Shamrock Showdown year with a 10.9 average at the team's first 4-way competition.

The teams went straight to the creeper pad and engineering work after the competition draw, which was once again done manually by the teams. Round 1 was drawn by the Adventure Flyers from Paraguay and brought slot switching Block 12 (Bundy - Bundy) together with Block 4 (Monopod - Monopod).

Arizona Airspeed and SDC Rhythm XP both used the finish of Block 4 to bring back the front piece partners to the top of the first page, while Fuzion and Elixir decided to accept memory and two different pages for the front piece.

The NSL-TV camera followed Airspeed and Rhythm to the creeper pad for the engineering and creeping work after the competition draw. Shannon Pilcher was observing Rhythm's preparations and the different engineering compared to his own team Elixir's plan.

Rhythm's and Airspeed's identical engineering almost generated the same scores for Round 1, as well. Airspeed won the round by one point and a few fractions of a second ahead of Rhythm.

Robert Chromy's reunion with SDC Rhythm XP on the ground was not the only coincidental reunion. In fact, the other one did not only take place on the ground.

Pat Walker is filming Arizona Airspeed at the Shamrock Showdown this year.

He is not the team videographer for the 2017 season and fills in for David French in DeLand. The current Airspeed lineup brings him back together with Thiago Gomes and Ari Perelman.

He was filming Sebastian Tempest in 2008 and 2009. The 2008 lineup had Thiago Gomes and Ari Perelman both in the lineup, and Tempest continued with Pat Walker and Thiago Gomes in 2009.

Gilles Dutrisac had replaced Ari Perelman after the 2008 season.