posted May 9th, 2006 - Two teams of the Air Force Academy, BOS and 7XY, came back for the second meet of the Colorado Skydiving League 2006 after competing at the season opener in April. Air Force CAD also attended the team's second meet after competing at the SSL Valentine's Meet 2006 in February. The Air Force Academy sent a new fourth line-up into the race last weekend, the Air Force Shockwave.

The AA/Intermediate Class competition draw at the second COSL meet was slower compared to the SSL meet in February and also slower than the one at the COSL April meet. However, Air Force CAD still managed to slightly improve the meet average from 9.5 in February to 9.8 last weekend and continues to hold the second place of the AA/Intermediate Class Rankings.

In fact, all four Air Force teams have placed their names on the top of the AA/Intermediate Class leaderboard. The team currently in 1st place, Last Second, was only a pickup-team for the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2006 and will most likely not show up at any other meet this year.

There were additional teams on site at the Mile-Hi Skydiving Center in Colorado last weekend, and COSL Director Travis Roth explained the situation on the meet weekend with his event story.

Colorado Skydiving League Meet 2 - by Travis Roth

The second meet of the COSL 2006 season went extremely well. 150+ CSL skydives, even with weather holds!

While we have posted only the scores of four team, Levitation and Mayhem both were at the DZ making serious training jumps with their coach. These teams are working systematically through the dive pool in their training schedule, proudly wearing the COSL tee-shirts, but they opted to not jump the rounds for the meet in order to concentrate on their training for the season. However, I did see some of the video, and the winks from their camera fliers proved to me that they are improving a great deal.

"Team Splat", with no jumps together prior to the meet, jumped the dive pool for the AA/Intermediate Class rounds. However, as a throw together team and with six other teams jumping and a busy tandem video schedule at the DZ, finding video flyers became difficult. So the team concentrated on learning and having fun. Considering a few of the teammates had not turned all the blocks in the draw, the team met its goals.

That means that 35 COSL participants jumped at our league event on Sunday alone, not to mention the Scrambles team that jumped Saturday, "Animated Shorts". Shorts jumped the AA/Intermediate Class draw from April. Considering that the team was scrambled together and the fact that they made it thru the whole sequence at least once each round, it was all smiles on landing!

On to the scores! All four Air Force teams did real well and showed great consistency and discipline in their jumping and dirt dives. The judges still found a few busts here and there for a block's grips spinning outside of the video frame or a lost grip on the hill. I know that all the Air Force teams would have preferred to knock out six rounds, but we had a few weather holds, including a full plane load that had to ride down due to wind gusts. One of the DZ’s planes also had to make a demo jump off-site for a little less than a hour, which provided a well deserved lunch break. The Air Force teams have utilized the new tunnel in Colorado for their training, something newly available for this season. It is fun to see the progression in modern skydiving with training aids like tunnels.

Again, thanks everyone. And, if you have any questions or concerns, please e-mail me at travis (at) coloradoskydivingleague (dot) com.