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Five teams were at Chicagoland Skydiving Saturday morning, four of whom would be competing in their first MWSL meet of 2007. As an extra bonus for the teams, the Midwest Skydiving League and Chicagoland Skydiving combined to bring Airspeed's Todd Hawkins to town to provide expert coaching.
Mixing genders clearly did not hurt the Furies any as they put up a strong 10.3 average despite a fairly slow draw. That score would have easily won most previous MWSL meets in the AAA Class. However, this time they were up against the highly dedicated and talented Rhythm team (JaNette Lefkowitz, Steve Lefkowitz, Laurent Beaudouin, Robert Chromy, Andy Metcalfe on camera) from Chicagoland Skydiving.
Rhythm put together an MWSL AAA Class record with a 12.8 average. Ever the overachievers, Rhythm actually completed the four "extra" meet rounds on Saturday as well. A rematch between these two high scoring teams is already less than three weeks away.
The highly experienced jumpers from Sky Knights finished with a 7.2 average. False Religion (Valerie Long, Andy Boyd, Paul Desruisseaux, Alan Butt, Kevin Naftzger on camera) also had a solid meet and took advantage of the all-random round three to put what turned out to be an insurmountable lead into place. False Religion scored a 15-pointer to J4F's 11 points in that round and finished with an 8.2 average.
The fifth team at the meet, SDC On the Fly (Sara Miller, Betsy Smith, Kim Allen, alternate Butch Connelly and Pete Jabczynski on camera), would not have any local Rookie Class competition at this meet. Also making their 2007 debut, On the Fly showed a great deal of potential despite missing one of their regulars. The benefits from the team's tunnel training were clear, with a 7-pointer in round one and a 4.7 average the meet, which at the time of this writing put them at the top of the NSL Rookie Class leaderboard.
Meet 3 probably exhibited the most talented collection of 4-way skydivers in our 9-year history this past weekend. Meet 4, a 10-round event, is on August 11th and 12th at Skydive Chicago, this year's USPA Nationals host. We are all looking forward to another opportunity for everyone to demonstrate the fruits of their hard training; that weekend will no doubt be here before we know it.
Meet report by Alan Butt