posted Sep 19th, 2026 - Arizona Airspeed’s 16-way lineup took the wake-up call in Round 2 seriously and followed up with four more highscores to win the 16-way competition. Michelle Karamon, Joey Marshall, Alisson de Vargas, Doug Hendrix, and Alex Swindle have now collected two USPA gold medals (4-way and 16-way), and they may add a third one in 10-way.

Paraclete XP’s current 8-way lineup did not allow the FS Sweep, taking the 8-way gold medals back to North Carolina. However, Airspeed and alumni will be just as happy with the results as the Hill family, who launched the Airspeed project in 1994. The 4-way Open Class medals were especially unexpected for the host of the FAI Outdoor World Championship 2026, where the Golden Knights will compete in 4-way Open for the U.S. delegation.

The Airspeed pickup team for the 8-way competition took the silver medals without much trouble and did not really expect to challenge the well-trained XP8 team. In fact, there is no doubt that the entire Airspeed community—teams, owners, and fans—is now looking forward to supporting the U.S. 8-way team from Raeford in what is expected to be a battle for the FAI gold medals against Qatar’s Falcons 8-way team.

There is a very good chance that the three sets of FAI gold medals will be shared by two different nations this year. Aethers Lille from France are the top favorite in 4-way Open, as are Nephtys Maubeuge in 4-way Women. France has not registered an 8-way team, leaving the United States and Qatar as the potential winners of the third formation skydiving competition at Skydive Arizona.

USPA Nationals 2025		1	2	3	4	5	6	Total	Avg
Rank	16-way Open	6,5	H,A,3	G,D,9	B,7	4,12	E,10	Total	Avg
1	Arizona Airspeed	6	5	7	9	8	8	43	7.2
2	Spaceland	5	10	5	7	5	6	38	6.3
3	Tequila Brothers	3	6	3	3	5	3	23	3.8
4	Fun Machine	5	3	2	2	2	5	19	3.2
5	Andromeda	0	2	1	1	1	1	6	1.0

Arizona Airspeed has another surprise waiting for the audience, this time related to the 10-way Speed competition. Airspeed’s 10-way team has a clear lead after the first two rounds, and the lineup is once again a colorful mixture of experienced formation skydiving competitors, led by the same four Airspeed 4-way members, all of whom competed in 4-way, 8-way, and 16-way, with Alex Swindle on camera.

This year, they recruited Airspeed alumni Dan BC, Jack Jefferies, Craig Girard, Niklas Hemlin, and Josh Hall for the 10-way competition, together with Lucas King and Rodney Cruce. The complete 10-way lineup also features Shawn Hill, son of Arizona Airspeed founder Larry Hill, who currently runs the skydiving operation in Eloy.

Neither Shawn nor Larry Hill have scoring or championship records in the NSL News database, making Shawn Hill’s position in the Airspeed 10-way lineup a very special occasion. He was already in the photo featuring the Airspeed 4-way team after its Open Class victory, which was the team’s way of recognizing the never-ending support of the entire Hill family.

This time, Shawn will probably win his own official USPA 10-way medal at the end of Saturday’s competition, which concludes the 2026 USPA Nationals. He will then return quickly to neighboring Arizona to work on the final logistical preparations for the outdoor world championship—the same event that the NSL News will cover next month.

---

---

Arizona Airspeed in 16-way at the USPA Nationals 2026

---

Help the NSL News to Continue the Work - DONATE PLEASE