posted Jul 24th, 2007 - Skydive Cross Keys in New Jersey hosted the 5th annual Karp Cup 4-way meet last weekend honoring the life of Seth Karp, team member and Point of the former MASL team Jetstream.

The turnout for the meet was the largest yet with two Rookie Class teams, four teams in the A Class and two teams in the AA Class. In addition to the eight 4-way teams Skydive Cross Keys had over 200 tandems scheduled due to a police tandem charity event for Special Olympics and an unusually large volume of spectators. Fortunately for all, the weather was spectacular.

The two teams competing in the AA Class, Controlled Descent and Air Pollution, met earlier than the rest of the teams for a 7:30 a.m. take-off in order to help the DZ with the busy schedule. Air Pollution took an early 5-point lead after the first two rounds. However, with some masterful random work in Round 3 Controlled Descent produced the highest score of the meet with a 21-pointer.

Air Pollution came back in Round 4, then increased the lead in each round and finished with a 12.3 average. Controlled Descent finished with a 10.8 average, the team's best result to date.

The A Class competition was very exciting with only one team, Meteor, that had already competed at another meet before. It was a close 2-point race up to Round 3 between Beer by 4, Meteor and Sonic Boom before the two top teams pulled ahead and made it a 2-team battle from here on.

Beer by 4 and Meteor were battling it out until Round 6. Even though Beer by 4 became tired since they were the last to finish the meet at 6:30 p.m. and way past their beer time, they almost made up the 4-point difference in the last round and ended up one single point behind in second place. The previous Meteor practice paid off and won the A Class competition.

Brockwell Stinks came from a freeflying history and had a very good showing in the same competition class. Four of the team members are freeflyers, and the team's videographer hasn't flown on his belly since AFF.

True Rookies was just what the team name indicates. The total jump number of all teams members combined was below 500. Most of the True Rookies had never done six jumps on one day.

Team Nerd had a 3-point lead after the first three rounds but got worried after a zero in Round 4. True Rookies posted the team's highest score in the same round, which tied the Rookie Class competition at Cross Keys. Nerds eventually won the last two rounds and took the gold medals in the Rookie Class competition.

MASL videographer Dan Ortiz did 13 video jumps for two teams and helped out a third team when its videographer had equipment problems at the last load of the day. As usual, the day ended with the annual raffle and a catered dinner with spectacular prizes donated by many sponsors of the skydiving industry, such as Bev Suits, Icarus, Mirage, Skysystems, Wings, Rigging Adventures, Square 3, Alti-2, Gowear and Sunpath.

Meet report by Cherie Schuch