posted Jul 14th, 2006 - A busy meet weekend is coming up once again. Ten events are scheduled, including two competitions in Europe. Two of the NSL meets are season openers, even though it is already July.

The Northwest Skydiving League naturally begins each season later than other leagues, due to the weather situation in Oregon. Harry Waller has been managing the NWSL activities for several years, and he continues to bring out the competitors in his region meet by meet.

Northwest Express4 was last year's NWSL representative in the AAA/Open Class and attended three of the NWSL 2005 meets. Elsinore Vengeance was even busier and attended all four NWSL meets in the AA/Intermediate Class. Additional NWSL teams competed randomly at the meets in each competition class.

The Virginia Parachute Council is actually the oldest competition league in the country. However, it was inactive for a long time until Jim Crouch brought it back to life by joining the NSL 4-way network in 1999. Dave Milliron continued with the VPC efforts when Jim Crouch stepped back in 2001.

The busy 2005 season was the last one for Dave Milliron as the leader in Virginia, and it looked for quite a while as if the VPC might take a break this year. Fortunately for the VPC teams and competitors, Chris Halsan contacted the NSL headquarters in May and offered his help to continue the Virginia Parachute Council this year.

Chris Halsan was so motivated to see what it takes to run successful meets that he visited the last competition of the Carolina Skydiving League with his team West Point. He met with CASL Director Randy Garman who informed the NSL News later that Chris Halsan made this great effort.

The Virginia Parachute Council has scheduled three competitions at three different locations for the 2006 season, and the first meet is coming up this weekend. Skydive Orange is the host for the 2006 season opener. Most of the VPC teams competed in the AA/Intermediate Class last year. J.F.F. was the strongest VPC team in 2005.

The upcoming meet weekend also includes a very important event in France. The NSL News on June 7 included the last update from France and mentioned once again that the official French 4-way qualification for the World Meet 2006 is still to come.

France has registered teams for each of the three events in Germany, and the line-ups of the 8-way team and the female category have already been put together long ago. Only the 4-way Open Class event misses the names of the French line-up at the moment.

Originally, French national coach Jerome David had not really planned to send a 4-way team to Germany, as previous NSL News stories had explained. However, the plan changed this year, and three former 4-way world champions from Maubeuge got back together with a new member.

The French association did not automatically sign up this team as the national team for the World Meet 2006. Differently compared to the other two national teams, the 4-way team for Germany has to win at a qualification event, which is open for every team that would like to be the French national team this year.

This competition takes place this weekend and is a part of the Coupe de France 2006, which is included in the NSL/ESL network this year. The competition draw for this weekend's ten 4-way events will be provided by the French meet management, and once again all participating teams will be able to compare the scores directly.

There is hardly any doubt that the new Maubeuge line-up with Davide Moy, Erwan Pouliquen, Julien Losantos and Paul "Polo" Grisoni will win the competition this weekend and then prepare the trips to Germany and Russia for the World Meet 2006 and the Malevsky Cup 2006. The interesting aspect of the meet in France is the question on which scoring level this world class line-up is performing less than a month before the start of the competition in Germany. The scores from France and all other meets will be posted as soon as possible.

CORRECTION NOTE: The 4-way qualification for the world meet takes place at the next Coupe de France event, the French Nationals 2006, on the July 29 weekend. This weekend's event does not include the 4-way qualification.