posted Jun 10th, 2007 - The 2007 season opener of the Midwest Skydiving League was a part of the record meet weekend on June 2 - 3 where a total of 74 teams were listed on the NSL leaderboard. However, the MWSL meet turned out to be below expectations, as MWSL Director Alan Butt reported a slow start into the new Midwest skydiving season in general.

MWSL 2007 had a slow start

By MWSL Director Alan Butt

Like the Midwestern skydiving season in general, the Midwest Skydiving League got off to a slow start last Saturday. Despite the healthy interest in 4-way noted in earlier NSL News articles, the first meet of the season began with three teams at Sky Knights SPC in East Troy, Wisconsin.

MWSL veterans Just4Fun represented the AA Class, while Handful of Bootie and Dream Air competed in the A Class and the Rookie Class, respectively. The forecast was not promising, but Saturday morning in Southeastern Wisconsin was surprisingly sunny and calm, though that would change as the day went on.

Just4Fun (John Lindstrom, Chris Whittet, Brian Ladow, Dan Raymond, Tim Shue on camera, had a solid meet, kicking it off with an 11-pointer in Round 1 and finishing with a total score of 48 points, the team's second highest score ever. Just4Fun was grateful to meet coach Lem Castro for his helpful advice, which assisted in overcoming the lack of practice jumps this year. The team was very secretive about the progress in seeking sponsorships, which was discussed in an earlier article.

Handful of Bootie, a pickup team made up of SkyKnights members (Derrick Krakow, Annie Jackson, Brian Martin, Nicole Fain, Tom Burzynski on camera), scored a 4-point average through four rounds. This accomplishment was very impressive given the lack of training and the fact that one of their teammates had fewer than 100 jumps and no tunnel time. This serves as a great lesson to those who feel 4-way competition requires extensive training, experience and coaching...

Dream Air, also a pickup team from Sky Knights, completed round two before withdrawing. The meet was punctuated by weather holds due to rain and clouds, but there were more than enough breaks to enable us to complete the full six rounds easily.

My thanks to Derrick, Lisa Schieffer and the rest of the staff at Sky Knights for hosting the meet, as well as to Skydive Chicago for providing a Twinotter for the day. Also thanks to Lem Castro for providing first-rate coaching instruction for the event. Our next meet is on June 23rd at Chicagoland Skydiving where we ought to see the season debut of most of the teams featured in the aforementioned NSL articles.