posted May 20th, 2004 - After a week of overcast and rain in the Northern Plains, the skies opened up clear and cool on Friday (May 14) to start a pre-meet coaching camp at Skydive Iowa in Brooklyn, IA. Skydive Iowa put on a first class meet and also boasted various DZ improvements such as the new bunkhouses which were more like little apartments than a typical DZ bunkhouse.Robert Chromy was on hand as our traveling coach to assist the four teams with help in exits, basic body position, dive engineering and planning. The usual Mantis clinic was provided Friday morning by Chromy, and Nick Halseth prepped a video clinic that night for anyone interested. Regional USPA Director John Goswitz was on hand as chief judge and typically was able to provide each round's scores even before the teams finished packing. Goz was even able to make a few fun jumps in his new Hawksuit.

Saturday was even more beautiful. A total of four teams competed and the meet was complete by mid afternoon with time for a couple bigs ways organized by Sandy of course - followed by bonfire, drinking, story telling and late night hot tubbing. Here's a reminder to all competitors - remember to instruct your Cessna dropzone freefallers about Otter exit order, exit spacing and general courtesy - remember, many times a competition like this is the first opportunity for many of these jumpers to use a big plane. Skydive Chicago's Twinotter with pilot Mike "Woody" Wood flew almost continuously that day with 26 loads - mockery abounded when we discovered we made more loads that day than the Otter's home DZ with 24 loads. With the no wind day, much canopy surfing and fun - the excellent Otter spotting gave short walks all day - with one notable exception by an unnamed NPSL director following a big way - video'd from a unique perspective by our own Nick Halseth.

Gang Green from Skydive Wissota returned for their third year, this time unopposed regionally in the AAA Class with the same desire to continue to experience all the blocks. MindCrime and Fairspeed may have disbanded this year - we'll have to see what happens at the other meets. With a relatively slow performance (only one practice this winter) compared to their usual excellent standards, Gang Green (Miles Hubbard OC, Bob Stumm IC, Eric Gagnelius P, Todd Jacobson T) finished with an excellent round six. The total of 44 points and a 7.3 average for the meet was sufficient to win in both raw and handicap score. It's of note to recall that this particular lineup has over 35,000 total jumps (not including camerman Pinky) and that Bob Stumm has recently returned from a trip to Thailand where the poor man was forced to jump with 356 other skydivers in a single formation. Look out Majik, Gang Green is only going to score higher as the season progresses.

Three teams competed in the AA Class. Fast FWD from Skydive Twin Cities repeated with a new lineup. Microburst Reloaded of Skydive Iowa chose to bump up from the A Class, and a new team - Sonic Death Monkeys from the Des Moines Skydivers a.k.a. the Couch Freaks - showed up with a brand new set of competitors. Fast FWD (Bill Rehm OC, Aaron Hislop IC, Steve Blake P, Sarah Bultman T, Mike Guillou Camera) took home both the raw (41 after four penalty points tying Majik's single round two in the FSL) and the handicapped score after a self proclaimed "very slow" meet. With a tumble on the round one exit, sloppy work in round two and subterminal video issues resulting in a bush in round two and four, this team pulled it together in round three and finished this second practice weekend of the season on high notes.

Fast FWD's team captain Bill Rehm commented that even though the score was not nearly as high as expected, quite of bit of good things were noted for future practice. Steve Blake is replacing the injured Andre Sheats and started the season with a tunnel camp in April. Bill and Aaron also visited the tunnel in November in addition to the April camp with Steve, and the center work improvement really showed. Rehm continued: "Sarah doesn't need no stinkin' tunnel training." Expect much higher Fast FWD scores by meet three and hopefully to see this team at the USPA Nationals this year.

Microburst (Nick Grillet OC, Sandy Grillet IC, Jason Seibert P, Ken Flanagan T, Nick Halseth Camera) also showed excellent performance and the benefits of tunnel training from this winter with solid 34 points total and zero penalties for the meet. If not for a botched exit in round five (remember to train your freeflyers on big plane etiquette...) the handicapped score would have been very close indeed. Tail Ken Flanagan was replaced by alternate Cliff Roy for this meet, and the team folded him in and skydived well. Microburst is one of the fastest improving teams in the NPSL and likely would easily outscore the original Microburst lineup from 3 years ago in a hypothetical head to head competition today. Expect great things and clean dives from these men. Congratulations to Nick Grillet as well on his high school graduation. Nick is the youngest skydiver in the NPSL and can already fly circles around (and 'under' for some big ways) most 'fun' RWers in the region.

Sonic Death Monkeys (Shawn White OC, Joy Woodworth-Drake IC, Ed Drake P, Pat Rounds T) pulled in a respectable total of 23 for the meet. This is an amazing performance considering these jumpers have been primarily freeflyers in recent years and have not had any 4-way practice prior to the meet. SDM impressively took on the double vertical Block 6 (Stardian - Stardian) in round one and was looking GOOD. We hope they intend to compete at future meets and start to field more teams, as well. It would be a shame to waste all this talent by keeping it in loose jumpsuits with no grippers.Much thanks to Chromy, Goz, Skydive Iowa/Bruce Kennedy, Skydive Chicago and Woody, and also Marsha from Hawksuits for giveaways (SDM won Hawkdesigns baseball caps and Steve Blake, fittingly, won a discounted jumpsuit to replace his current jumpsuit - noted by his teammates as having thin wimpy grippers and no inside leg grippers.) Extra thanks to Sandy for making this all happen year after year. Meet two is scheduled for June 12-13 and we are expecting Skydive Twin Cities to have the Twinotter for the summer by then, and DeLand Majik member Doug Park as the traveling coach for that meet - how cool is that?