posted Jan 31st, 2018 - The Indoor Cloud League results on the last two 14+ leaderboards of the 2017 season were apparently alarming enough for the Czech ICL team at the Hurricane Factory in Prague.

Paraclete XP had outscored the Czech team two times in November and December, after three other first places on the 14+ leaderboards of earlier months.

Jan Klapka mobilized the highest number of Czech 4-way teams ever to perform the first six 2018 sequences in January. It was a fierce competition between the Czech teams to make it onto the ICL 14+ leaderboard for January, and only five of the 12 teams won the honor to post their scores and videos for the Hurricane Factory.

The January competition turned out to be the first time that HF Flying Circus represents the Czech ICL team in both Open Class categories (AAA - AA), even though the Bad Boys performed both sequences, as well. The HF Cubs, 4-way junior team of 2017, took on a AAA Class sequence for the first time and finished not too far behind Flying Circus and Bad Boys. The young ladies were even closer with their AA Class sequence, which can also be generated out of the 4-way Junior dive pool.

Hurricane Factory - January	AAA	AA	A	RRR	RR	R	Total
Teams	B,14,L,10	B,14,22	B,L,19	A,G,K	M,B,L	M,B	Total
Bad Boys	22	19	-	-	-	-	-
HF Flying Circus	22	19	-	-	-	-	41
HF Cubs	18	18	-	-	-	-	-
Accord	11	12	15	-	-	-	-
Mimozemky	-	13	16	17	-	-	16
M Team	-	12	14	-	-	-	-
Elements	-	-	16	25	-	-	25
Flying Rebels	-	-	8	10	15	26	25
HF Flying Chameleons	-	-	7	6	10	15	-
HightFive	-	-	-	11	13	24	-
HF DragonFlies	-	-	-	11	16	15	-
PB Wave	-	-	-	-	21	21	21
Hurricane Factory's Best of January	22	19	16	25	21	25	128

Four of the six teams that took on the A Class sequence had another very close battle for the best Czech score in this category. Mimozemky and Elements, both all-female lineups, ended up tied in the A Class, and Mimozemky's video is linked to the 16-pointer. Elements also had the highest score for the RRR sequence, where they feature the Czech Rookie Class and female 4-way power.

Jan Klapka also recruited a new team for the Rookie Class sequences, where the 4-way juniors took mostly care of the scoring business for the Hurricane Factory so far. PB Wave (Radek Bednár, Ruda Valášek, Martin Brixí, Petr Zikmund) posted the first highscore with the 21-pointer in the RR Class.

4-way Junior team Flying Rebels picked up the pace for R Class sequences dramatically and posted the team's first 20+ score with the 26-pointer. The new capping rule limited the score to 25 points for the R Class sequence.

The total of 129 points opens the 2018 competition between the defending champions of the Hurricane Factory and the challengers at Paraclete XP, who will soon follow up with scores and videos from North Carolina.

New in 2019: Block 1 (Molar - Molar) and Block 13 (Mixed Accordion - Mixed Accordion)

Some of the more experienced Czech 4-way competitors invested some extra time to test the two new block techniques that FAI/IPC has decided to introduce in 2019.

Two Bad Boys and two Flying Circus members (Marián Jeziak - Bad Boys - Outside Center, Dagmar Bezdeková - Flying Circus - Point, Lukas Kaderabek - Flying Circus - Inside Center, Jan Klapka - Bad Boys - Tail) joined forces to check out the new maneuvers, even though there is still a year ahead with the current Block 1 (Snowflake - Snowflake) and Block 13 (Offset - Spinner). Bad Boys member Jan Lukavec observed and evaluated from outside of the flying chamber.

The currently defined version of the new Block 1 does not offer different options for the turning directions, while the new Block 13 allows a variety of different ways how to perform the block.

Jan Klapka said that the new Block 13 is much easier and faster compared to the current one. He added that the new Block 1 requires special orientation and compares to a combination of two current blocks (19, 21). The Bad Boys/Flying Circus team tried Block 1 with a horizontal and a vertical option in the three minutes that they spent for each block. Then they went back to the 2018 dive pool...