posted Mar 28th, 2005 - The Midwest Skydiving League season launches its 2005 season with the season opener on May 21 at Skydive Chicago. The professional skydiving center in Ottawa and Chicagoland Skydiving in Hinckly are both hosting two of the five MWSL meets this year.

The third meet of the MWSL 2005 schedule will be hosted by the Sky Knights Sport Parachute Club in Wisconsin on July 23. The Sky Knights management has recently finalized a special incentive for this July event. Current Airspeed Odyssey member and reigning 8-way world champion, Eliana Rodriguez, will visit as the event coach. MWSL Director Alan Butt provided the information after the plans were finalized:

The Midwest Skydiving League has a tradition of providing great coaching for the league meets. Local and regional experienced competitors are regularly invited to help teams and competitors at the competitions. On certain occasions, MWSL hosts have added excitement to the events by inviting celebrities to do the coaching job and more.

The Sky Knights Sport Parachute Club in Wisconsin is the first MWSL host this year to treat the MWSL teams, competitors and all regional skydivers to another great opportunity. The competition coaching by Eliana Rodriguez on meet day (Saturday, July 23) is included in the registration fee. Host and MWSL management provide this service together.

Teams, competitors and all regional skydivers have additional opportunities to get more out of the visit by Rodriguez on Friday before and Sunday after the event. The world champion competitor and coach will be available to work with interested people on both days. The Sky Knights management can provide the details for this opportunity.

Eliana Rodriguez' impressive skydiving career can be reviewed in her NSL Profile. However, the NSL Profile of Eliana Rodriguez surely needs an update since it ends when she won the World Championship of Formation Skydiving in the Women's Class in 2001 with the U.S. team Synchronicity. In fact, even though her skydiving career was already impressive enough to catch the NSL attention, the best was still to come.

Rodriguez moved to Arizona and joined Airspeed after winning the slot in the Airspeed try-outs in the beginning of 2002. She became the first female Airspeed member and trained and competed with Airspeed 8 and Airspeed Zulu that year. Bad luck kept her from winning her first USPA Championship as an active member in the Open Class. She broke her ankle in August 2002 and missed the gold medal performance of her 8-way team at Skydive Chicago.

However, her 8-way team was qualified as the national team for the Mondial 2003 in Gap, France. Rodriguez resumed training with Airspeed 8 as soon as her ankle was well enough. The 4-way event had lower priority by then. Airspeed 8 ended up in second place after a most exciting race with the Russian 8-way team in September 2003. The whole Airspeed squad traveled from France to Florida and won the USPA 8-way Championship in Lake Wales. Airspeed Dragon with Eliana Rodriguez took the fourth place in 4-way.

The 2004 season had 8-way as the top priority for Airspeed and Rodriguez once again. The new battle with the Russian 8-way team and also with France in Croatia was on the agenda. This time, Airspeed won the gold medals, and Rodriguez became the first female competitor winning the World Championship of Formation Skydiving in the Open Class.

Back home in October 2004, Airspeed once again won the USPA Championship in 8-way. Rodriguez and her line-up of Airspeed Blue placed 5th in the 4-way event.

Airspeed changed plans for the 2005 season. The NSL News story of January 7, 2005, provided information of the new directions the 8-way world champions would follow this year. The Airspeed 2005 plans include top competition in both the 4-way and the 8-way event.

Airspeed has to defend the 8-way gold medals at the world meet 2006 in Germany. There is not much doubt that Airspeed 8 will once again qualify as the U.S. national team at the USPA Championship 2005 in September in Perris and move on toward the 2006 goal.

The U.S. competition in 4-way is much tougher and tighter than ever before. However, Airspeed wants to be a part of this competition, as well, and has formed two very strong line-ups. Eliana Rodriguez is a member of Airspeed Odyssey, together with Andy Delk, Brian Johnson and Airspeed veteran Craig Girard. This line-up was the stronger one at the first competition this year, the SSL Valentine's Meet 2005, which was held in February in Eloy, and promises to keep up with the Airspeed goal of contending in both events. Round five of the Valentine's Meet is currenetly featured on NSL-TV.

This is the current situation of Arizona Airspeed and the update for Eliana Rodriguez and her NSL Profile. She will visit the Sky Knights Sport Parachute Club in July as the reigning 8-way world champion, and also as a new and well trained top contender in 4-way. Even more excitingly, Rodriguez will just have returned from competing with the world's best 4-way and 8-way teams at the Malevsky World Cup in Russia, which will be completed two weeks before her trip to Wisconsin. She will have great information available for the participants of the MWSL weekend event in East Troy.