... that round six of the SSL May meet offers a last look at the SSL teams before the upcoming new competiton?
posted Aug 3rd, 2004 -
The NSL-TV completes the coverage of the Southwest Skydiving League May meet just in time before the next SSL competition gets on the way. The jumps of the May meet were also the last ones available. The video of the June meet got lost on the way from the east to the west coast.
Arizona Blade's round six of the SSL May meet - see video
The SSL August meet is coming up this weekend, and it will be very interesting to see the teams' progression between then and now. SSL Director Pamela Stevens promised that the new footage will once again be available for the NSL audience. The May meet was hosted by Skydive Perris, and the SSL moves back to the same place this weekend after the June stop in Elsinore, which attracted a total of 16 teams.
Arizona Blade's line-up at the previous SSL 2004 meets
The upcoming SSL competition promises a lot of exciting footage for NSL-TV. The line-up of teams includes once again Arizona Blade, the highest AAA scorer of the Southwest Skydiving League 2004. Blade will compete with a different line-up though. Beat Steffen will not be available this weekend. The search for an adequate alternate was more than successful. Robert "Robob" Healy will travel from Florida to California/Arizona and join Thomas Hughes, Mark Kirkby and Natasha Montgomery. It does not look as if Blade's performance and scoring level will change at all. The team might be even stronger with Healy helping out.
Robert Healy with Sebastian Teiwaz at the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2004
Healy trained and competed full time with Elsinore Matrix years ago. He moved back to Florida and has not joined high-profile teams ever since, at least not in 4-way. The attempt to build a new high performance 4-way team in Florida besides DeLand Majik has not materialized for Healy yet after previous efforts with Brian Johnson, Ron Hill and Steve Johnson, which actually resulted in a promising average of 16.6 in April 2003. Healy also joined the DeLand Majik 8-way team in 2002, which won the USPA bronze medals at Skydive Chicago.
Healy still kept himself busy taking player coach positions here and there, coaching at several tunnel camps, including NSL Tunnel Training, and competed regularly with Sebastian Teiwaz' flexible and casual line-up in 2003 and 2004. He will continue with Teiwaz when it fits to the new schedule, which might be dominated by Blade's training efforts for the remainder of the 2004 season. It is very possible that Healy will compete this weekend with Blade in Perris and then with Teiwaz the following weekend in Lake Wales.
Synchronicity at the Mondial 2003
Arizona Blade will face sharp competition at the upcoming SSL meet. The NSL News reported earlier that the U.S. national 4-way team of the Women's Class, Synchronicity, was planning to compete at the SSL June meet. This was incorrect, and Synchronicity had actually the SSL August meet on the team's competition schedule. The upcoming competition will be the first and last meet test in 2004 for Synchronicity before traveling to the World Meet in Croatia in September where they will try to take back the gold medals they lost to UK's team V-Max in 2003.
Besides the challenge for the new Blade line-up, the test for Synchronicity and another class for the School Boys, the race between the SSL regulars will be as exciting as at the previous meets. The three Elsinore teams of the June meet, EGT, Satori and Adrenaline want to at least reduce the distance to the Perris teams in the AAA Class. A similar rivalry between Perris and Elsinore has been taking place in the AA Class where the Perris teams (Precision, Rebels, Pending) have kept the upper hand over the Elsinore teams (Equinox, Fuse) so far. The competition is close in this class, as well, and the ranking order can change at any time.
The Perris School Boys with Airspeed veteran Dan BC gave Arizona Blade already a very hard time at the last SSL meet in Elsinore. The race between these two teams ended up with a one-point advantage for Blade after six rounds. The Perris School Boys will surely be eager to turn around the outcome of the last meet and join the competition between Blade and Synchronicity.
Perris Precision's round six of the SSL May meet - see video
The outcome of the final SSL 2004 rankings are crucial since the SSL 2004 Grand Prize sponsors the class winners financially to the NSL Championship at SkyQuest 2004 in November. The recently featured round six of the SSL May meet offers a last view of the teams that competed at the first Perris meet of the 2004 season before the new competition this weekend. Enjoy the show.
