posted Feb 10th, 2006 - The NSL News story on January 19 reported that the New England Skydiving League plans a comeback for the 2006 season, directed by Beth Murray and supported by team Mass Defiance.

It was a coincidence that Christine Kelley of the Blue Sky Ranch contacted the NSL headquarters almost at exactly the same time and laid out plans to re-activate the Ranch Skydiving League. She explained that the interest in 4-way has come back at the Ranch after a few slower years:

"Basically, the last few years have been fairly low key with Formation Skydiving. We continued to have teams, but nothing was very much organized. Last season, we started to see a resurgence of belly flyers, much to our happiness."

The Ranch Skydiving League has been a part of the National Skydiving League network since 1999 and competed with team Ranch Air Traffic (RATs) at the second NSL Championship in 1999 at Skydive DeLand. The RSL had a relatively strong participation throughout the first years. The RATs helped a lot to keep the 4-way momentum up in New York State.

Kamuran "Sonic" Bayrasli launched the Ranch Skydiving League in 1999. He was a member of the 4-way team Sonic Brothers by then. Sonic has now become one of the top canopy piloting swoopers in the country and managed the Fantasy Swoop of SkyQuest 2003 very successfully.

The interest in Formation Skydiving competition continued when former Airspeed world champion Jack Jefferies moved to New York City and made the Blue Sky Ranch his new home drop zone. He had taken on a professional career as a business consultant with his headquarters in New York City.

However, the RATs retired, and Jack Jefferies became too busy and could not support the RSL activities very much any longer. Result was the fact that the Ranch Skydiving League had already a slow 2004 season and took a complete break from the official league business in 2005.

The RSL comeback this year seems to be promising. Christine Kelley reported that there are already four teams in training for the 2006 season. Team Chemistry consists of Walter Maynard, Rachana Bhatia, Becky Owczarzak, Christine Kelley, and Oren Peri on video.

Walter Maynard is the 4-way veteran of Chemistry. He has been Ranch inventory for many years and was with the league from the very beginning. As one of the top competitors at the Ranch, he always showed great interest in the NSL News and provided a lot of information for updates from the north.

Ranch Fusion includes Gene Benson, Dave Grabowski, Ben Cheah, and Michelle Fanzo. Dave Grabowski is the Fusion member who remembers the good old times when the league was in full swing. He was disappointed last year when he ordered a few items in the NSL Shop: "I wish we had the good old times at the Ranch where Sonic, then Dawn, put the league together. Sonic picked up different things and got busy, Dawn got burned out."

The RSL hibernation seems to be over, and Dave Grabowski with the new Fusion line-up will hopefully get back the excitement and action that he used to enjoy at the RSL events.

Billy’s Beauties have no Billy in the line-up and seem to relate the team name to the owner of the Blue Sky Ranch, Billy Richards. The line-up consists of Tracey Bartels, Kellie George, Kim Hollander, Bonnie Vucetic and Miro Vucetic on camera.

Anomaly is a well known 4-way name of the Ranch Skydiving League history, and the team competed last time at four meets of the RSL 2003 season. The 2006 line-up with Bob Schuyler, Kim Schuyler, Demetri Kavour, Brian Ball, and Roger Cuhna on camera competed with three of the current members already at the USPA Nationals 2005 in the AA/Intermediate Class competition.

Christine Kelley hopes that even more teams will compete this year after reinstituting the league: "We have at least one new team that is trying to get it together. We ended the 2005 season with a Scrambles competition that sparked a lot of 4-way interest. When the season officially begins with our Wheel of Fortune Boogie, on April 29 - 30, we will give away free jumps, and we will be launching a season packed with promoting Navelators."

After giving away free jumps at the Wheel of Fortune Boogie and the "Navelators", the scores of the Ranch Skydiving League 2006 season will hopefully pour into the NSL headquarters meet by meet.