posted Sep 4th, 2020 - It has been a very difficult year for teams and Formation Skydiving competition events so far. The corona virus crisis had its big impact just as much on the skydiving world as it had on the economy, and many business operations will not even be able to resume.

The impact on skydiving competition cannot be measured yet, as most of the regular events had to be canceled in 2020. The handful of 4-way competitions that have taken place had to be small, due to restrictions and caution of potential participants. Even the scheduled and coming online events will most likely have lower participation compared to live competitions at skydiving centers.

It would be no surprise if recovery of Formation Skydiving competition in general is going to take a little while until teams and competitors feel comfortable enough to invest again into training and traveling to events.

The balancing and budgeting of running larger events in the middle of the health crisis has become much more difficult, and it was one of the reasons why Skydive City stepped back from hosting the USPA Nationals this year. The United States Parachute Association (USPA) eventually canceled the event for good.

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NSL Live Talk with Skydive City team ZEAL

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It was a very difficult decision for Skydive City as the host, and it was not any easier for USPA to cancel and reschedule the event for next year. There is usually an increased number of local and regional skydivers who form teams just for the special event on their home turf or in the home state.

The situation was the same in Florida and at Skydive City where several new teams were looking forward to attending national championships without traveling to a location far away. It is more than understandable if teams get discouraged and scale back their efforts if an event is not taking place any longer.

However, this was not the case for Z-Hills team ZEAL. The team members (Annemarie Hammond, Kim Lewis, Nancie Smith, Ron Tabor, currently with Frank Deazley on camera) met each other at numerous events of the Florida Skydiving League at Skydive City and Indoor Cloud League events at iFLY Tampa and iFLY Orlando.

Sometimes they were in the same lineups where they began to connect with each other, or they jumped with the same recreational groups of skydivers at Skydive City. Annemarie Hammond has been a load organizer there for years.

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ZEAL at a Florida Skydiving League meet - Indoor Cloud League in August 2020

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FSL and ICL organizer Amer Kassas eventually helped the ZEAL members to form the team and conduct the first training weekends in 2019. Goal was still participation at the USPA Nationals 2020 in Zephyrhills, Florida, together with several other local and regional 4-way and 8-way teams.

The new team started from scratch and made progress with indoor and outdoor training and the help of Amer Kassas and external 4-way coaching. They enjoyed learning the technical parts of the 4-way dive pool, as well as improving their individual skills. The special atmosphere of a 4-way team and the group dynamics also added new components to the experience.

It was sad news for ZEAL when the corona virus crisis brought team training and FSL/ICL activities to a halt, and it became even worse when the USPA Nationals at Skydive City were canceled.

However, ZEAL had been enjoying their 4-way project enough at this point in time that they decided to continue with training and competition anyway - with or without national championships on their home turf. In the latest NSL Live Talk during a ZEAL training weekend they explained what made them decide to continue and make new plans.