posted Mar 14th, 2005 - The NSL News had introduced the new DeLand team "Fire" with a news story on December 22, 2004, which can still be found in the NSL 2004 Archives. The DeLand Fire story received a lot of attention and initiated several comments and a discussion in the NSL Forum . In fact, this topic was the most visited one in 2004.

The NSL News followed up later in December with two stories that covered the status of team videographer and alternate Thomas Hughes (December 24 and 31, 2004). The NSL News had also plans by then to follow up with more DeLand Fire team information.

Former Arizona Blade and new DeLand Fire members, Natasha Montgomery and Thomas Hughes, were already introduced to the NSL audience when they answered NSL News questions in an interview on December 9, 2004. Additional information was posted with the AAA Class story on December 8, 2004, covering the NSL Championship 2004, where Montgomery and Hughes won the NSL Shugar Cup with Arizona Blade.

The NSL News still plans to follow up with more detailed profiles of all DeLand Fire members. The history of the team members and the connections between their teams offers a lot of interesting information. Center Outside Gary Smith is stll the current reigning 4-way world champion with DeLand Majik. Center Inside Shannon Pilcher and Tail Ian Bobo were team mates with DeLand Genesis and DeLand PD Blue. They are still team mates in the PD Factory Team's swooping line-up, as well.

DeLand Fire began training in January 2005 at Skydive DeLand and is aiming at the qualification as the U.S. national team for next year's World Championship of Formation Skydiving in Germany. DeLand Fire is one of the six U.S. top contenders, which are expected to compete for the one precious slot at the USPA Championship 2005.

The new team completed a three-week training camp last weekend and rests for the remainder of this week until the actual preparation for the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2005 begins for DeLand Fire on Friday. Gary Smith still uses Fire's off-weak for coaching work, while Shannon Pilcher and Ian Bobo train with the PD Factory Team.

The recent training camp included the competition jumps of last year's world meet in Croatia and this year's SSL Valentine's Meet, which was held on February 12 at Skydive Arizona. It is very common practise that teams use the competition draw of other meets to test their own performance level in training.

DeLand Fire opened the team doors for the NSL News last week and provided the NSL-TV with some recent footage. Fire alternate and videographer Thomas Hughes copied two jumps, which can now be viewed by the valued NSL-TV audience. The first sequence is round one of the Valentine's Meet. The Golden Knights and Airspeed Odyssey both scored 19 points for the same sequence (19-13-1). DeLand Fire completes the 20th point right around the 35th second of the working time. The second sequence is a speed round with five Random Formations (C-A-B-F-J). The NSL-TV counted 48 or 49 points in working time.

Of course, these are training jumps, and each experienced competitor knows the difference between training and competition. However, the DeLand Fire members were pleased with the team's progression between the beginning of the training in January and this last camp. The scores of the recent meet jumps in training gave them confidence that they will already be competitive at the upcoming FSL Shamrock Showdown 2005. The competition with the Golden Knights, DeLand Majik, Team Fastrax and Italy's Sinapsi PD in DeLand will be the first serious test for DeLand Fire.