posted Oct 25th, 2008 - Tonight is the time when the official event banquet of the USPA Nationals 2008 will take place at Skydive Arizona in Eloy. The award ceremonies for the specific events were already held the same evening when each competition was concluded.

The procedure was different the last time when USPA Nationals were hosted by Skydive Arizona in 2006. The award ceremonies for all events were also held on Saturday, as a part of the official event banquet. The winning teams of the early events had to wait the whole week to receive their medals.

This year's event management adjusted the schedule and handed out the medals right after the conclusion of each competition. Result was a large crowd Tuesday evening in the hangar where the 4-way award ceremony took place.

The NSL News coverage of the USPA Nationals 2008 is brought to you with the help of:

The ceremony began with a speech by Larry Bagley, USPA's Director of Competition. Then the Intermediate Class teams were called to the stage, where R4, Air Force Encore and Slipstream received their medals. R4 won with a 13.1 average, which is at about the same scoring level of the past years in the Intermediate Class. The team from Northern California (Jon Martens, Rob Radez, Deanna Frank, Julius Frank, Jason Imamura on camera) won by seven points and gave up only three of the first four rounds, then never looked back.

Air Force Encore (Brandon McCutcheon, Jimmy Miltenberg, James Hickerson, Addison Schenk, Mike Kendrick on camera) and Slipstream (Stephen Blake, Jon Arnold, Aaron Hislop, Bill Rehm, Richard Barr on camera) battled hard for the silver medals. The Air Force cadets won six rounds, Slipstream outscored the team from Colorado four times and ended up two points behind in the bronze medal position. No other Intermediate Class team was in serious contention for a medal position this year.

The award ceremony for the Advanced Class competition followed, which applies the same competition draw as the Open Class. CSC Rhythm XP of the Midwest Skydiving League (JaNette Lefkowitz, Steve Lefkowitz, Brian Ball, Laurent Beaudouin, Kevin Naftzger on camera) won with a 10-round 16.9 record average in the history of this USPA competition class. There was no challenger in this category for Rhythm.

Centerline XP (Brian Smith, Mark Izzo, Corey Beaudreau, Justin Beaudreau, Keith Thivierge on camera), the team from Connecticut that had competed a few times this year at the Ranch Skydiving League meets, was in a safe silver medal position behind CSC Rhythm XP, as well. The battle in this category took place for the bronze medals, and former Airspeed member Christopher Irwin guided his Perris Katalyst lineup (Glenn Frank, Piya Navanugraha, Michael Blanton, Terry Weatherford on camera) to a 2-point victory over Butta Bing.

The award ceremony left the best for last, and it was time for the Open Class teams to climb onto the podium - except the international teams. Guest teams Black Cat from Russia (Alexander Golovkin, Evgeny Stashchenkok, Vasiliy Korotkov, Alexander Kvochur, Vadim Niyazov on camera) and France Maubeuge (Jeremie Rollett, Mathieu Bernier, Julien Degen, Guillaume Bernier, Fabrice Rieu on camera) gave the USPA Nationals 2008 a high-profile international atmosphere, along with two other teams from Russia and three more teams from France. France Maubeuge (23.5) finished right behind Airspeed Odyssey, and Black Cat (22.6) was in 3rd place. Both teams were honored with USPA medals, but they had to stay on the ground level in front of the podium.

The NSL-TV video clip captured the moments when it was time for Airspeed Odyssey to receive the next set of gold medals. Perris Fury (Joshua Hall, Uli Stuwe, Christy Frikken, Chris Farina, Niklas Daniel on camera) and the Golden Knights (Brian Krause, Kurt Isenbarger, Matt Davidson, Eric Heinsheimer, Larry Miller on camera) had already been honored shortly before. These were exciting moments of the ceremony for the Airspeed members once again, even though it was the 15th time in two years that they ended up on top of the field.

It was just as exciting for the Perris Fury members to receive the team's first set of medals at USPA Nationals. Fury had to work hard for the silver medals and won them literally in the very last round of the meet. The Perris team benefitted from a bad Round 10 for the Golden Knights who had a 1-point lead going into Round 10.

By the way: the last NSL/PD News Show during the 4-way competition was recorded before, during and after the award ceremony. The video of this show and other interviews at the award ceremony can be found at the bottom of the PD Blog website.

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