posted Nov 10th, 2010 - Ben Liston, former Mass Defiance member who has recently been training and competing with the Amphibious Attack Tigers in 4-way and Dallas Rogue in 8-way, is also organizing tunnel meets and now a new 16-way event. He recently provided a summary of the 16-way competition and announced the next tunnel meet at SkyVenture New Hampshire.

Over the first week of September, 68 jumpers on four different teams from around the country participated in the 16-way Rumble 2010. Ben Liston put together the event and organized the Connecticut Parachutist, Inc. team.

SDC Rhythm XP member Steve Lefkowitz led a group at Skydive Chicago's Summerfest event, and Jim McCormick captained a team from Colorado. John "Pete" Scharrer brought jumpers attending the Lost Prairie Boogie together to participate.

The competition was over six rounds, and each jump was engineered to be more challenging than the previous one. Things began with mainly infacing randoms and simple block moves and then quickly progressed to include delicate builds, complex inners, and a formation that had 12 of the 16 flyers outfacing.

Scores of the early rounds were in the neighborhood of 6 to 9 and quickly built up confidence in the participants. However, Rounds 4 and 5, designed by Scott Latinis, left teams feeling happy if they scored just 2 or 3 points.

Round 6 required eight jumpers to build a Star, then the other eight to fly through and build a Star for the first group to fly through. Teams scored a point for each Star and an 1/8th of a point for each person too who flew through.

The Lost Prarie team was only able to get two rounds in. The Colorado and Connecticut teams finished the meet, and the Chicago crew was about to get in five of the six rounds before weather shut things down.

The New England team (Jim Rees, Scott Latinis, Paul Leslie-Smith, Justin Beaudreau, Hollie Reno, Jack Cunniff, Sara LaWare, Brian Stephens, Ari Perelman, Michael Kamszik, Vera Renalter, James "Bu" Klinge, Ben Liston, Corey Beaudreau, Alfonso Gioiella, Brian Touhey, Steve "Scuba" Feldman on camera) finished with the top average, followed by the Chicago jumpers and the Colorado team. Ben Liston said that Colorado deserved a great deal of credit for going an extra mile and show complete separation between each point to bring some confusion to the rules.

The meet served as a great break and a day of fun for many of the nation's top amateur Formation Skydiving competitors. The 1-day format proved to be very successful. The goals of giving competitors a chance to have some fun between training weekends and providing an opportunity to build some challenging formations were all met. As the video shows, the quality of the dives were great, and Ben Liston hopes that the 16-way Rumble will turn into an annual event.

16-way Rumble 2010		Round1	Round2	Round3	Round4	Round5	Round6	Total	Avg
1	New England	6	9	4	4	2	3.375	28.375	4.7
2	Chicago	3	5	1	1	0	-	10.000	2.0
3	Colorado	4	2	0	2	1	1.500	10.500	1.8
4	Lost Prairie	2	0	-	-	-	-	2.000	1.0

Ben Liston also announced at the same time this year's New Hampshire wind tunnel competition. The 4-way Formation Skydiving tunnel meet is scheduled for Saturday, December 11th, and a 2-way VFS event will follow on December 12th.

He said that it is the "same deal as in past years". There will not be any cash purses, but prizes will include tunnel time and gifts from manufacturers. Ari Perelman is running the VFS portion of the meet, Ben Liston is the 4-way Meet Director, Jim Rees is judging. 29 teams competed in 4-way last year, plus 15 teams in VFS. Ben Liston added that the event is "community organized", and all player/coaches, judges, directors, and event crew members volunteer their time to give back to the skydiving community.

Registration costs $65 per competitor in 4-way, regardless of the competition class (AAA - AA - Rookie), $80 for VFS competitors. The registration fee includes a pizza lunch, bottled water, a DVD of each team's competition rounds, the flying time, two minutes of official warm-up time. Teams registering before November 21 receive a free T-shirt for each team member.

The Rookie Class competition is a 5-round meet on Saturday morning. As in the past, two Rookie Class competitors will be paired with two veteran 4-way flyers who will serve as player coaches at no additional charge. AAA and AA Class flyers will compete in the afternoon over 10 rounds.

The 4-way meet follows the NSL rules for competition classes. The AAA/Open Class will have 5 to 6 points per round and uses a modified dive pool for the meet (all Random Formations, plus Blocks 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, and 22). The AA/Intermediate Class sequences have 4 to 5 points per round and consist of Random Formations and a few Blocks (7, 9, and 14). The Rookie Class has 3-point sequences and only Random Formations.

The maximum number of teams in the AAA and AA Class together is 18, another 12 teams can register in the Rookie Class. Ben Liston said that teams will be registered on a "first come first serve" basis. Participants can register directly with Meet Director Ben Liston by e-mail: NHtunnelmeet-AT-gmail-DOT-com.

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