posted Dec 1st, 2006 - The recent news stories covered mostly events in the USA. A current order of NSL Gloves directed the NSL News back to the international Formation Skydiving competition community. It was a team order from Sweden and obviously related to the latest sales special for NSL Gloves in the NSL Shop.

The Swedish 4-way Team Spaï made the NSL News several times this year, due to a very exciting race for the honors to become the national team for Sweden at the World Meet 2006. The last story on July 30 was a summary of the 2006 season and included the sad news for Team Spaï that the team finally missed the precious slot at the last qualification event.

Team 42 moved on and represented Sweden at the World Meet 2006 in Germany, while Team Spaï evaluated the 2006 season at home. New Spaï plans for next year have now materialized, and the team order of NSL Gloves is the first serious move to get ready for the 2007 season.

The line-up has not changed, as team member Mikael Kaulanen confirmed. However, the front piece (Tobias Alsiö and Mikael Kaulanen) will switch their A-Slots:

"Changes for next year is that me and Tobias will change positions in the front piece. I will be Center Outside, and Tobias is the Point. We think that our personal skills support the switching. We will test this in the tunnel first. We already had a creeping session last weekend, and it felt good."

Ulf Liljenbäck (Center Inside) and Mats Svensson (Tail) are flying in the rear piece, Daniel Åström was doing the camera work for the team this year. The team goals and the training plan are similar compared to this year's team agenda, as Mikael Kaulanen explained:

"We will continue to reach for a higher average, and we want to win the Swedish national championship. Then we want to compete for Sweden in 2008. We will attend the Swedish Cup events and the national championship, of course."

Mikael Kaulanen said that the team was partially happy with the 2006 season. Obviously, the results at the final event were not good enough to make it a perfect finish. Team Spaï was not able to continue with the previously shown progression (13.3 - 13.4 - 14.7 - 14.5) at the most important event.

Team 42 peaked at the right time (13.3 - 14.7 - 15.1) and won the qualification event by six points. The Swedish national team was also able to improve the scoring average by one point between the July meet in Sweden and the World Meet in August and finished the 5-round competition in Germany with a 16.2 average.

Mikael Kaulanen was aware of the missing piece at the end of the season: "We were only partially satisfied with our average of 14.5 at the national championship this year since we didn't reach our scoring goals all the way."

Team Spaï will train at the wind tunnel in Bedford and do some creeping in the spring next year. Teams cannot skydive at that time due to the long winter break with very cold weather in Scandinavia: "At the moment, we schedule only for training weeks in the summer. We hope to get money to be able to add a 2-week training camp to our trainng schedule, at some warm place in early May."

Team Spaï will use the team members of a former Swedish national team's line-up (Phenix) for coaching, Mattias Nord and Kenneth Eriksson. Mattias Nord was the coach and alternate for Team 42 throughout the 2006 season. He will help last year's opponent to win in 2007. The plans of Team 42 are unknown at the moment.