posted Jul 31st, 2004 - Skydive Dallas hosted the 3rd TSL meet of the 2004 season on July 24th and 25th. Eleven teams returned once again to test their skills in the air. As before there were six AAA Class teams including Dallas Cyclone as a guest team. Four of the teams call Skydive Dallas home, those being Dallas Thunder, Dallas Tantrum, Dallas Cyclone and Rave. Mischief and Touch-N-Go made the trip from Houston and call Skydive Spaceland home. The line up in the AA Class included the same four teams as the last meet and hail from all over Texas: Avalanche and Pinky V from Skydive Dallas, 4 of a Kind from Skydive Spaceland, and 4 Fun from Skydive San Marcos. The Rookie Class had Funnel U from Skydive Dallas returning for another great meet.

To start the day, league director, Ryan Smith, handed out two certificates for tunnel time from SkyVenture won at the last meet by two TSL teams. 4 of a Kind won 30 minutes for having the most improved performance. Funnel U won 10 minutes for being the NSL leader in the Rookie Class. After the standard briefing, a discussion of Block 12 was held. This can be a difficult block to judge. Sherry Schrimsher was the chief judge and applied the rules as written ending any controversy. The weather was partly cloudy with a high cloud layer that kept everyone very comfortable, well, for July in Texas. All six rounds were completed in a timely fashion. The bad weather waited to roll in just as the meet completed.

Dallas Thunder (Ryan Smith, Scott Latinis, Kelly Fredrickson, and Dave Burton, with Al Levy as video) once again set the pace. This time, Kelly Fredrickson was filling in for Jim Klinge at inside center and Al Levy filling in as video. Rave, coached at the meet by Joey Jones, followed in second place. Dallas Tantrum did a great job coming in third in spite of slot changes since the last meet.

The AA Class had 4 of a Kind (Kim Murphy, Kim Airhart, Kirsten Hardmant, and Jorge Alvarez with Cory Kossan on video) leading the way once again by 1.67 points per round. Their effort was enough for a first place finish in both raw and handicap scoring. Pinky V and Avalanche rounded out the AA class both with improved averages a well.

TSL is also the only league to have an 8-way division. This meet was going to be unusual as Deguello 9 was at their home DZ of Skydive Spaceland while Dallas Thunder, Dallas Lightening and Rain were at Skydive Dallas for the meet. Deguello 9 jumped the four rounds, were judged by Christy Hitchens and faxed their scores to Skydive Dallas. Unfortunately, Skydive Dallas was socked in by clouds all day. As a result, the 8-way competition was weathered for this meet. There will be one more 8-way meet at the TSL finals in October so hopefully all four teams will get one more chance to meet head to head.

Always a cutting edge league, the TSL held their first all electronically judged meet. As far as we know this has only been done once before, a couple of years ago at a meet in Arizona. The TSL videographers downloaded their team’s jumps directly to a state of the art video editing system, then the files were remotely accessed by the judges via another computer upstairs at Skydive Dallas. According to Sherry Schrimsher, the efficiency of this system is just “fabulous”. Congratulations to Ryan Smith, Joe Rekart, Sherry Schrimscher, Skydive Dallas and the videographers for making this important first happen.

All of the scores from the meet can be found at the Texas Skydiving League web site.

Meet story provided by Sherry Dodson.