posted Aug 26th, 2006 - The new meet weekend is already in full swing, while the NSL News takes another closer look at last weekend's complete leaderboard. 72 teams are listed on the scores page and used the same competition draw. This number represents a new record weekend in the NSL history. Participation records have been broken on a regular basis this year.

Great Britain was the major contributor to the new record number this time. 47 of the 72 teams competed at the British Nationals 2006. Each of the four competition classes was well attended by the British teams (9 - 10 - 14 - 14), and the A Class and Rookie Class competition has really taken off this year on the European island.

In fact, British A Class and Rookie Class teams have set new standards for performance and scoring levels after the complete synchronization of competition classes and the draw between European Skydiving League and National Skydiving League. The quality of the performance level in these two classes can be followed since some of the British teams kindly provided meet videos on a regular basis.

Meet videos of the best British AAA/Open Class teams can still be viewed on NSL-TV since the British Army team and Perris Airkix competed at the World Meet 2006, which was presented on-line by the NSL-TV/RealXstream.com partnership. Additional British meet videos of last weekend's national championship have been added this week.

Bodyflight Frenzy won the Rookie Class competition and posted three 23-pointers on the way to the gold medals and a 19.9 meet average. The last 23-pointer of round eight (C-M-E) can be viewed on NSL-TV. The success of the British Rookie Class teams is supported by the availability of two wind tunnels, which are easily in reach for most of the teams.

Bodyflight Frenzy represents the 16-foot Bodyflight tunnel in Bedford, while SkyVenture's Airkix tunnel recently finds great attention with its home team, the British world champions in the female category, Perris Airkix. Especially the Rookie Class teams can get great results at the live meets after sufficient tunnel training.

Another Bedford team, Bodyflight Storm, also won the AA Class competition last weekend with a 13.3 meet average. The benefits of the tunnel training was mostly obvious in round three, where Storm's 19-pointer was far ahead of all other teams and became the foundation for the 1st place in this competition class.

UK team Wingnutz won the A Class competition in Great Britain for the third time this year. The team's 13-pointer in round seven (B-6) can currently be viewed on NSL-TV. Wingnutz, with Darren Atter (Outside Center), Andy Blevin (Tail), Jason Kierman (Inside Center), Vince Lam (Point), Elaine Curtis (Alternate) and Tom Hartland on camera, has finally taken a dominating position in the A Class.

It was not like that at the beginning of the season. Escondido offered very strong resistance throughout the first two meets of the UK 2006 season (53 - 52 and 67 - 66). Wingnutz clearly won the third competition (61 - 49 - 47) and left all other teams behind at last weekend's competition, as well, with a new record average of 12.1 on the scoreboard.

The NSL News story on August 22 was posted before all scores of last weekend's competitions were on the leaderboard. Perris Airkix had the top position in the AAA Class at that time, and teams from Great Britain had taken the first places in each of the four competition classes.

Only the AAA Class situation changed later in the week when the scores of the Southwest Skydiving League were added to the leaderboard. The Perris Airkix ladies from Great Britain had to watch a team taking the top position that they had shared a lot of training time with in Perris.

Perris Fury attended the team's second competition of the 2006 season last weekend and won the AAA Class competition of 19 teams with an 18.3 meet average. Perris Airkix posted a 17.1 average, which appears to be clearly behind Perris Fury. However, the competition between these two world class teams was actually much closer than it seems.

In fact, Perris Fury was only one single point ahead of the new world champions after six rounds. Perris Airkix had an 18.2 average after the same six rounds. The UK ladies were even four points ahead of their Perris partners after the first two rounds. Fury found the rhythm in rounds three and four, picked up the pace in the last two of the six rounds and ended up one point ahead of Airkix.

The AAA Class leaderboard finally offered a more colorful picture on the top, compared to the other competition classes where the teams from Great Britain dominated. Teiwaz Lake Wales of the Florida Skydiving League and Austria's Monkey Circus managed to squeeze their names into the top six, as well.

Pulse and Billy's Bitches of the Ranch Skydiving League also intruded the UK dominance in the AA Class, where Bodyflight Storm took the 1st place with the 13.3 meet average. The RSL teams completed only four rounds, while the event in Great Britain was completed after all eight rounds.

Stay tuned, this weekend's first results will be posted very soon.