posted Jul 16th, 2007 - Yesterday's first meet story covering the Southern California Skydiving League event in Elsinore mentioned the AAA Class Founding Fathers in 2nd place with a 19.8 average. The NSL News now received information of the line-up. The Founding Fathers were John Hamilton, Dan BC, Christopher Irwin and Pat McGowan. Pat Newman filmed the team for the meet.

The team members knew that they would all be in Elsinore for the meet due to their coaching jobs. The idea to throw the line-up of "old boys" together for the Elsinore meet came up a few weeks prior to the event and sounded like "too much fun to pass up", as Dan BC recalled.

All team members have children and had to pick them up as soon as the meet would be completed. They have also been involved in 4-way competition for a very long time. It did not take too long then until the team name came up. The Founding Fathers had a great time, and the 19.8 average is not too bad for a pick-up team...

Scores from the Netherlands, Finland and New England have been added to last weekend's leaderboard in the meantime. Jacco van Eerden wrote the meet story from the Netherlands.

Windy Dutch Skydiving League competition on Texel

By Jacco van Eerden

Four Rookie Class teams and six A Class teams participated in a competition which experienced all types of wheather conditions. The teams were eager to jump and wanted to show their skills, so the patience of the competitors was tested seriously. Both categories still nearly completed Round 2 on Saturday after having to wait almost all day for the wind to die down.

In the A Class competition, the top three teams were very competitive after the first two rounds, which were judged with the TrueScore system. Team Yottsu! managed to stay really close to the highly trained team Whooops, as well as to Pioschop where former Punky Fish member Johan Wieken replaced an original team member.

The final ranking in the Rookie Class was already showing after two rounds. Team Zwabber showed stability and calmness, which helped to achieve a 10.7 meet average. Cool Runnings with their recognizable presence showed that they are on the right track, as well.

Strong winds and a major thunderstorm struck again on Sunday and stole valuable time from the competition. The Rookie Class teams managed to complete four rounds, while the A Class teams were finished after three rounds.

Team Whooops showed that they still are the team to keep an eye on. Their scores remained on a high level, which is a direct result of the team's training efforts. The Whooops members were eager to jump all rounds, even with the strong winds. Team Yottsu! and Pioschop finished tied in second place.

Team Zwabber showed the usual strength in the Rookie Class. The 12-pointer in Round 4 showed that they can take advantage of a good opportunity when it comes along. Zwabber secured the top position in the Neherlands with this highscore.

The Dutch Skydiving League also uses an additional handicap system to stimulate participation in the Netherlands. The handicap system is based on earlier results and the experience level of the team members. The raw scores are being multiplied with a handicap factor.

The results of the handicap scoring brought surprising final rankings in the Netherlands. The medals were awarded according to the handicapped scores and motivated the lower scoring teams. The higher scoring teams were naturally rewarded with the better raw scores. One of the main purposes of the Dutch Skydiving League competition is to get and keep competitive skydivers motivated and expand its community. I think this objective was achieved once again by far.