posted Feb 14th, 2005 - The NSL News was not very patient in an effort to get first-hand information of the season opener at Skydive Arizona in Eloy. John Hoover, team captain of the Golden Knights, was one of the NSL News targets for an early update. Hoover has been a consistent provider of articles for the Skydiving Magazine, and he competed with his team at the SSL Valentine's Meet last weekend. The meet was barely completed when Hoover was already contacted by the NSL News with a request for a meet story. The Army team's captain took his off-time on Monday to write the update, and the NSL News appreciates the great effort very much.

Hoover confirmed the weather problems in his story: "Welcome to the Sun - the sign said, but I didn’t see the sun for a few days. Bryan Burke, Betsy Barnhill and the Skydive Arizona crew did their best with what Mother Nature threw at them over the Valentine Day weekend. Three days of rain and clouds slowed the meet down to a crawl, but the DZ did a wonderful job getting everything finished by Sunday night."

The Golden Knights gave their two line-ups different names for the meet to avoid any possible confusion with the other Golden Knights team in attendance. The "Black" team is the regular Formation Skydiving competition team and has the same line-up that competed at the 2004 USPA Nationals. Hoover gave a brief overview of the Black team's preparation: "We took a break after the October nationals and just recently started training again in Arizona. We completed 150 training jumps before the Valentine's Meet and were eager to test ourselves against other teams."

Hoover was just as surprised as all other teams and competitors Saturday morning: "The weather report was only bad for Saturday, so we showed up not really expecting to jump. Clouds are tricky in Arizona, and before 10:00 AM we were on our way up for the first round."

The unexpected competition on Saturday morning might have had an impact on the team's performance, as Hoover recalls the performance of the Golden Knights Black team that day: "The meet started well enough for us, but we were disappointed in most of our first day’s performance. This was especially so on the fourth jump where a missed the finish on a Zig Zag, which lead to some real confusion as to which point we were on. We ended up losing two points in busts and several seconds working time trying to decide what was happening."

It was not a happy end of the Saturday for the Golden Knights: "Since only four rounds were done on Saturday we had to sleep on our one really bad round." However, the Army team recovered very well and posted excellent scores in the remaining two rounds of the 6-round event: "Sunday proved to be a much better day. We felt controlled and confident, but not overly fast. It was a great learning experience for the team, and it will help us in our preparations for the USPA Nationals."

Hoover then introduced the second line-up of the Golden Knights in Eloy: "The Golden Knights Gold team is a compilation team, put together from four different sections of the Golden Knights. The Point was Angela Nicholas from our Style and Accuracy Team. The Inside Center was the Sergeant Major of the Golden Knights' headquarters. Tail was Sean Sweeny from the Gold Demonstration Team, and Outside Center was Greg Windmiller from the Tandem Section. The commander of the Golden Knights shot the video."

The second team came together mostly in an effort to do 8-way with the regular RW team, the Golden Knights Black. The Gold team decided to warm up by doing a little bit 4-way. Hoover talked them into entering the AA Class, and the rest is history and on the scoreboard.

Hoover was impressed with the Gold team's performance: "To be completely honest, I did not expect them to do as well as they did. It became apparent after the first couple of rounds that they had a real chance of winning. We coached them as much as we could, but with zero training jumps there is only so much we could do. Even more impressive was the GK Commander videoing the team. He has less than 350 total jumps and less than 40 video jumps. These guys and one gal owe a lot of beer."

Hoover continued with his impressions of the two Airspeed line-ups: "Arizona Airspeed Odyssey is Craig Girard’s 4-way team. They have the two newest members of Airspeed with Andy Delk and Brian Johnson, but you couldn’t tell it. They were smooth and confident throughout the meet and posted some really great scores. They also had some of the most creative engineering during the meet. In round one they switched the inside and outside centers to keep them from doing a long move to the top of Block 1 (Snowflake - Offset). It was really quite gutsy. I was very impressed with their performance and will be interested to see how far they progress before the USPA Nationals."

Hoover gave Airspeed Velocity a lot of credit, as well: "Airspeed Velocity is Kirk Verner’s team. They were solid and consistent throughout the meet posting the highest score in round four. I thought this was the toughest dive of the meet, requiring a lot of power. Being the 8-way world champions, this veteran team powered through the points, outdoing everyone. They too will be a team to watch for the national title."

The AA Class competition was next in Hoover's evaluation of the meet: "DiveWerkz had some great moves and solid block techniques. I thought they lost the meet by a few bad exits and some shaky sub-terminal work. They look to be having a good time though and have real potential for posting some big scores this year. The Golden Knights Gold team passed their hour of free tunnel time onto DiveWerkz in the interest of sportsmanship."

Hoover had his eyes on the Air Force team in the A-Class: "The A-Class was dominated by the Air Force Academy, which had two really solid teams, Quad and Prodigy. They knew their block techniques and had a good grasp of 4-way. Ex-Knight Eric Heinsheimer and the US Army Academy will have to work hard to beat these two teams at this year’s Collegiate Championship."

The 8-way competition was last not least in Hoover's report: "There were four teams in the 8-way event, which started right after 4-way was completed, at about 10:30 AM on Sunday. Three teams competed for predictable medal standings, and one 8-way competed for the sheer fun of it. Airspeed looked sharp, fast and edgy moving through the sequences. They had a few glitches, but I thought they had a very respectable performance for the first meet of the year. The Golden Knights broke the predicted average of 10 points per dive by posting a 10.4 over five rounds. We were very happy with everything. If there had been a God-Frog award at the Valentine's Meet, Simply Smokin' were a lock. They competed hard turning an average of 1.5 formations per jump. They were fun to watch and great to be around."

Hoover finished with credit for the meet management: "It was well ran and a good meet overall." The NSL News is now waiting for the video footage of the meet, and the first jumps will be on NSL-TV as soon as the footage arrives.