NSL News Archives: 23 December 2001

posted Dec 25th, 2017 - Block 17 (Danish T - Murphy) and Block 5 (Blackhole - Bipole) are the only blocks in the whole dive pool that cause mirror-imaged formations and block maneuvers at every other page of the sequence.

Block 5 was out of the way after being drawn in Round 1 of the NSL Championship 2001. Block 17 came up in Round 5 of the competition, together with three random formations for the fastest round of the whole meet.

The teams in the first five places, including guest teams Sinapsi and Optic Nerve, plus the Angry Beez, all scored their highest results of the meet in this round. However, the mirror-imaged pages obviously slowed down the lesser trained and skilled teams more than the top teams. Nemesis only tied their best round of 19 points in Round 2. Teiwaz tied their best round of 17 points in Round 3.

The remaining four teams, JetStream, Mr.Pink, Ranch AVGas and Skydive.com DefCon4, scored higher in a different round. The reason is the fact that the top teams have more training resources available to practice the "unusual" moves more frequently. A mirror-imaged formation looks different than the original picture.

NSL Championship 2001			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	Total	Avg
Rank	AAA Class		6,B,5	F,7,2	9,P,11	J,18,D,C	E,O,Q,17	H,12,16	4,13,L	19,1,N	23,21,A	14,8,G	15,24,M	Total	Avg
1	DeLand Majik	US	21	24	24	24	29	19	19	22	18	17	-	217	21.7
2	Golden Knights	US	17	23	24	22	29	19	21	21	18	17	(17)	211	20.7
3	DeLand PD Blue	US	17	22	22	20	28	18	17	21	20	16	(17)	201	19.8
4	Sinapsi PD	IT	16	18	19	17	23	16	12	17	14	13	(15)	165	16.4
5	Optic Nerve	US	14	18	16	19	21	13	15	16	14	12	(14)	158	15.6
6	Nemesis	US	12	19	17	12	19	13	13	16	16	12	(13)	149	14.7
7	Angry Bees	US	12	17	17	10	19	12	14	14	11	8	(12)	134	13.3
8	Teiwaz	US	9	15	17	14	17	12	13	11	12	11	(13)	131	13.1
9	Jetstream	US	11	14	13	9	13	11	10	11	11	10	(10)	113	11.2
9	Mr. Pink	US	10	14	13	11	12	10	11	12	11	9	(9)	113	11.1
11	Ranch AVGas	US	10	13	11	6	12	4	7	11	2	8	(9)	84	8.5
12	DefCon4	US	9	13	10	9	10	9	4	4	8	7	(8)	83	8.3

Team - Round 5	Page 1	Page 2	Page 3	Page 4	Page 5	Page 6
DeLand Majik	6.26	6.00	5.28	5.12	4.69	5.10
Golden Knights	6.53	5.26	4.45	5.06	5.19	4.71
DeLand PD Blue	6.38	6.06	5.28	5.11	5.66	5.32
Nemesis	8.98	7.98	6.81	9.65	---	---
Angry Bees	9.56	8.57	7.76	8.57	---	---

The moves in a mirror-imaged sequence require turning the other direction if the piece partners stay together through the whole working time.

When the scores of this round caught the attention of the NSL News, the stop watch came into the game again for a closer look at the impact of the mirror-imaging Block 5.

The NSL News compared once again the times for each page of the featured teams with each other. This time, it was not that much about the fastest times and pages. Goal was to check how much the mirror-imaged pages would affect the performance.

The results for this sequence confirmed the fact that the top teams are not affected as much by mirror-imaging than the other teams. DeLand Majik, Golden Knights and PD Blue went through the round with the usual "learn - earn - burn" pattern.

Nemesis and Angry Beez had their slower pages every other round when the different pictures and moves came up. Here are the exact times for the technical experts.