posted Mar 15th, 2007 - Two more days until the start of the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2007 - Round 9 of the Valentine's Meet 2007 is now on NSL-TV. Round 10 will be added tomorrow. The competition draw of this weekend's meet will be the next event on Friday evening at the DeLand Holiday Inn.

It will be a live draw once again where the teams will be in charge of their own destiny for the ten rounds in DeLand. It has become a Shamrock Showdown tradition that the participating teams are being inroduced to the live audience while the team members draw the numbers and letters for each sequence.

Back to the Valentine's Meet in Eloy, Round 9 did not bring any major surprises. The sequence (21-16-12) was the slowest one of the whole competition, as the scores show. The three top teams were clean, and the slow sequence did not allow any of the contenders to gain or lose much ground.

Round 9 was still a repetition of the slow Round 7 where France Maubeuge won by one point over Airspeed Odyssey. The French team was once again a little bit quicker and came to the Zig Zag of Block 21 on the 4th page (34.73 seconds) when Odyssey had just completed the second Bundy of Block 12.

Odyssey's performance in this round was fast and clean and continued on the high level of Round 8's quality. It was probably a surprise for the Odyssey members when they did not get to the 19th point in time and lost a point to France Maubeuge. Perris Fury had a good jump and was still one pace behind Odyssey and Maubeuge.

However, the Perris team has shown round by round that it has the potential to win a round here and there, and Fury kept up with the two other top teams most of the time. The distance to Airspeed Odyssey looks very long with 19 points total after ten rounds. The Fury members and Perris head coach Dan BC will be very busy trying to find out how to get closer from here on and until September.

Perris Fury provided a new update of the team's activities, and the tight work schedule will not make it much easier to train enough. There are tunnel camps with tunnel league meets that Fastrax Blue member Erin Murphy and Fury member Christy Frikken manage for the Fury coaches. The meets of the California Skydiving League will keep the Fury members busy when they scramble to help other skydivers into the 4-way community.

At the same time, the Perris team has to take care of business and work together with the skydiving industry for the team support and sponsorships. It brings a tough agenda with a tight schedule to be a full-time competitor.

Perris Fury completed approx. 75 training jumps in February, flew over 3.5 hours at the Bodyflight Bedford wind tunnel in Great Britain and obviously competed at the Valentine's Meet. The team reported that it was a very successful tunnel camp in Bedford: "The camp consisted of over 13 hours of flying time, with 4-way teams from England, Finland and Germany."

Bodyflight Bedford is the host of the World Challenge 2007, which will bring a large number of teams to the wind tunnel competition. Over £20,000 of prize money will be on stake on April 7 - 8 in Bedford, and the NSL News will cover the tunnel competition live from the event site.

Fury also moved into a new team room on their home turf in Perris. The new Fury home is right next to the Performance Designs office in Perris. PD supports Perris Fury and the team's promotional activities.