posted Feb 3rd, 2006 - The full NSL-TV coverage of the NSL Championship 2005 is almost complete. Round nine has now been edited and uploaded, round ten will follow next week. The timing seems to work out very well since the first footage of the 2006 season will hopefully be available at the SSL Valentine's Meet 2006 in two weeks at Skydive Arizona.

Round nine of the NSL Championship at SkyQuest 2005 was another slow sequence for the AAA/Open Class teams. The 3-block sequence began with the challenging Block 1 (Snowflake - Offset) on the hill and included the fast Block 17 (Danish T - Murphy) at the end.

Both AAA/Open Class teams, Italy Sinapsi PD and TeiwaZ-Hills, launched complete Snowflakes more or less successfully. Teiwaz struggled slightly with the actual launch, while Sinapsi PD missed the fastest completion after a great exit.

The missed completion was the only flaw for the Italian team in this round. Sinapsi PD followed up on the painful round seven with a conservative and very clean performance. TeiwaZ-Hills lost one point due to a wrong grip at the completion of Block 1 on the second page.

Round nine was the first missed jump for Air Force Prodigy. As mentioned earlier, the Air Force team had to leave for service duties in Colorado before the meet was completed. FSC Wind Damged and Airlock had the chance to begin catching up with Prodigy. However, round nine with a 2-block sequence did not offer the best opportunity to gain much ground.

It was already quite obvious that the Florida and Georgia teams were only competing for the silver medals. This race had been close so far, and FSC Wind Damaged had just taken the lead for the first time in round eight. The team from Lake Wales added another point to the lead in round nine and had a 3-point advantage going into the last round of the meet.

Round nine in the A Class is worth a quick viewing. It can serve for a classroom session in the team quarters of lower experienced teams and competitors. Zero Tolerance Miami had fun with the sequence M-19, the good old Star as the exit formation and the popular Block 19 (Ritz - Icepick).

The Miami team and the event judge both apparently enjoyed the energetic performance and did not realize that the rules for Block 19 require a certain direction for the rotation of the pieces.

ZeroT's rear piece turned forward, and the move appears to be according to the team's plan for the jump. However, Block 19 requires the rear piece to turn backwards, and the front piece has to turn the same direction.

The infringement remained undetected in each round. ZeroT completed six points within working time, and these six points were also posted on the scoreboard. There was no damage done since Zero Tolerance Miami was the only team that had signed up for the A Class competition.

The Rookie Class had a different sequence, as well. Round nine had four different sequences for the four competition classes. Team America was the only participant in the Rookie Class, as well, and added another 2-digit score to the team's 2005 record performance at the NSL Championship. The Texas Skydiving League team plans to skip the A Class this year and move straight up to the AA/Intermediate Class dive pool.

Round nine of the NSL Championship can now be viewed in the NSL 2005 Archives. Links to the video files of this round and all previous jumps are also set at the NSL Championship page of SkyQuest 2005.