posted Jul 10th, 2010 - The new meet weekend is in full swing, and the first scores will be posted very soon. The NSL News goes back to the last weekend one more time, as it featured a special and unusual occasion. It was a weekend where the Rookie Class teams had the strongest participation of all four competition classes.

In fact, the number of Rookie Class teams was identical with the number of total teams in the three other categories. Teams from the MidAtlantic Skydiving League, the Virginia Parachute Council and from Finland combined for a total of 16 teams, eight teams competed in the Rookie Class.

All eight Rookie Class teams came from the two US leagues, while grass root teams in Finland like the A Class with the eight blocks in the dive pool.

The majority of the Rookie Class teams attended a Scramble event of the Virginia Parachute Council at Skydive the Point.

Five team captains guided the participants through the three rounds: Chris Halsan, Christi Meyer, Dean Schlemmer, Kristy Heady and Jamie Rogalla.

The three other Rookie Class teams attended the 8th annual Karp Cup of the MidAtlantic Skydiving League at Cross Keys. The Karp Cup is the annual memorial event for one of the MASL 4-way competitors, Seth Karp, a member of former 4-way team JetStream. Seth Karp lost his life in a landing accident in 2002.

Jul3rd,2010		Round1	Round2	Round3	Round4	Round5	Round6	Total	Avg
Rank	AAAClass	N,14,6	22,J,15	L,12,16	K,D,A,3	O,13,18	B,20,5	Total	Avg
1	Cross Keys Air Pollution	11	10	7	12	10	9	59	9.8
Rank	AAClass	N,14,6	22,J,15	L,8,G	K,D,A,P	O,13,18	B,20,F	Total	Avg
1	Cross Keys Weatherhold	9	9	9	12	8	11	58	9.7
2	Team Alzheimers	4	2	5	5	6	6	28	4.7
Rank	Rookie	N,C,E	J,H,B	L,M,F	K,D,A	O,G,P	B,F,Q	Total	Avg
1	C+D Squared	2	3	0	2	-	-	7	1.8
2	Team Awesome	1	1	3	1	-	-	6	1.5
3	Manifest Closing	1	1	1	0	-	-	3	0.8

MASL Director Dennis Miller provided a short summary of this year's event:

"We had a video shortage due to several other events running concurrently. Our seasoned videographers Larry Thomas and Mark Kruse helped us to work through it in addition to three flyers who are new to competition video (Michal Motykiewicz, T.J. Maglia, and Bogden Cucu).

Most of our Rookie Class competitors were new to 4-way competition. In addition, Cross Keys' 2007 USPA gold medalists, Air Pollution, reunited for the meet and competed as Air Pollution Reloaded. After the meet we raffled off some great prizes from our sponsors (tunnel time, 50% off containers, reserve repacks, jump tickets and much more). All participants received a Karp Cup dinner after the meet where we were joined by most of the drop zone."

The Air Pollution lineup of 2007 consisted of Rob Fields, Martin Schneider, Cherie and Karl Schuch. Jack Baum was filming the team. The Reloaded lineup had Larry Thomas on camera. The NSL News recalled the exciting finish at the USPA Nationals 2007:

Cross Keys Air Pollution was six points behind the leader, Air Force Ascent, after Round 7. Air Pollution did not give up and turned the 6-point deficit into a 1-point difference in Rounds 8 and 9. The excitement was already on a very high level when the teams were waiting for the scores of Round 10.

It turned out that Air Pollution won the missing point in Round 10, and both AA/Intermediate Class teams had to put their jumpsuits back on for a jump-off. The viewing of the jump-off videos on DZ-TV was even more exciting, of course. Cross Keys Air Pollution won the jump-off round by two points (14 - 12) over the Air Force team and takes the gold medals back to the MidAtlantic Skydiving League headquarters at Cross Keys.