DELAND --"This is the first time in a year we've been able to compete on our own turf," Solly Williams said as he walked from the drop zone at Skydive DeLand toward the DeLand Majik team room.

For the last year, Williams, Gary Smith, Joey Jones, Doug Park, and team videographer Graham Harding have been busy competing around the world, winning competitions that will take the team to Croatia to compete in the skydiving world championships.

Last weekend, however, the rest of the world came to the Majik's "home sky" and the local team triumphed.

For two days, 16 teams from the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, and Denmark competed in 10 rounds of four-way formation contests at the Shamrock Showdown at Skydive DeLand at the DeLand Airport. The event is part of the Florida Skydiving League competitions.

In such four-way events, team members run through a series of formations prescribed by the judges. Beginning more than 10,000 feet in the air, each team does the same series, competing to see which team can run through the most formations in 35 seconds before separating and opening their parachutes.

Skydive DeLand is the mecca for four-way formation skydiving, Williams said, adding that the four-way contests are the most popular form of competitions.

"We were one of the founders of Shamrock Showdown," said Majik member Doug Parks. The event was designed to bring top-level teams to DeLand.

"We do a lot of the legwork to make it happen," Parks said. "A lot of the teams here, we've coached or worked with," he added. "They come back to compete in this event."

Between jumps, team members stayed busy. Two filled in for jumpers missing from a sponsor's team while Williams coached two teams who had come from outside the country to compete -- the Italian national women's team and V-2, a United Kingdom team that hopes to win the British national championship this year.

Their other duties didn't distract the team from the main business of the day, however.

After their first jump, DeLand Majik was a point behind the Italian national skydiving team.

"We actually scored higher," Williams said. "But we had a penalty."

By the time competition ended on Sunday, DeLand Majik had more than recovered, winning the competition with 213 points. The Italian team came in second with 204 points. Another DeLand team, Genesis, finished third with 190 points.

The Italian team is among those seeded at the top for the world's championship in Croatia in September. The other top-seeded teams are the Majik and the French team. This is the first time since 1992 the United States team will come from DeLand.