posted Jan 4th, 2011 - The NSL News never looks only at the top contenders at any meets. Usually there is great competition everywhere on the leaderboard, which deserves the same attention. However, as in other sports, many of the world class athletes are also the leaders in the sport and more visible.

Several of the "other teams" at the Dubai Championship 2011 have been covered by the NSL News in the past, and there are also competitors in Dubai who make the trip just with a team for the meet.

The lineup of one of those "pickup" teams recently caught the NSL News attention. One of the two German teams in Dubai is almost just as much a complete family affair as the Canadian national team Evolution has been in the past years. The LeMay family will not be in Dubai this year, and the German Tillenburg family has taken the slot with Connatural.

Five Tillenburg family members are in the Connatural lineup, including the camera slot. The constellation is a little bit different though compared to the Canadian LeMay family who consisted of father Michel and his three sons Benoit, Vincent and Martin, plus videographer Daniel Paquette.

Father Harald Tillenburg is on camera for his two children Janine und Sascha who fly together in the front piece, Sascha in the Center Outside slot. Piece partners Janine und Sascha Tillenburg are even closer connected, they are twin brother and sister.

Sascha Tillenburg recently volunteered into another very close connection. He married Daniela who is now a Tillenburg, as well, and flies the Tail slot for Connatural. This would leave Center Inside Dennis Gottschalk as the only outsider, just as Daniel Paquette seems to be with Evolution.

But the Canadian team videographer is no outsider at all. He is a very close business partner in the multiple skydiving operations that he runs together with Michel LeMay and his three sons. Dennis Gottschalk is as little an outsider as Daniel Paquette is. He is Janine Tillenburg's boyfriend and completes the literally connatural Tillenburg relationships.

The Tillenburgs organized the family trip to Dubai just for this occasion. Daniela and Sascha Tillenburg have their own plans for the 2011 season. They formed a team in 2010 with two competitors from Berlin who used to be members of the PSV Fire lineup and are also a married couple, Katja and Bernd Düring.

It was a "blind date" that brought the two couples together at a tunnel training camp in Bottrop, Germany, ISB Air's home tunnel. Dieter Schwarz, member of the German national 4-way team and unofficial world amateur champion of 2010, Paratec-Saar, connected and supervised the flying sessions.

The blind date was very successful, and the Tillenburgs and Dürings made plans for the remainder of the 2010 season and for 2011. The Tillenburgs live in Düsseldorf, while the Dürings travel from Berlin to meet somewhere in Germany for the Vehementis training.

The team training for Daniela and Sascha Tillenburg with Vehementis begins shortly after returning from Dubai. Those two couples have a winter training plan with tunnel sessions in February and March. Coach Pete Allum will work with Vehementis in April in Ampuriabrava, Spain. The team will then continue with summer training and competitions in Germany.

However, the 2011 season begins for all Tillenburgs in Dubai. Black Moon will offer some internal national competition between the two German teams. Three of the Black Moon members were in Dubai for Black Wolf in January 2010.