posted Oct 2nd, 2007 - The NSL News covered mostly the teams on the top of the leaderboard throughout the live coverage at the USPA Nationals 2007.

Perris Fury in 4th place received attention before and during the competition, and Mass Defiance presented the sequence of Round 5 for the NSL-TV audience on September 8.

The position of the team from the New England Skydiving League split the leaderboard between the "full-time teams" and the "weekend amateurs" beginning in 5th place. The 19.3 average was an impressive new record result for Mass Defiance and only six points behind the full-timers of the French guest team Aerokart.

The next team in the AAA/Open Class "amateur rankings" of the USPA Nationals 2007 was FooZa with a 19.0 average, which is just as impressive as the Mass Defiance average. The NSL News had introduced FooZa already with a story on August 20 when the team from Skydive City in Zephyrhills had just posted a 20.0 average at the August meet of the Florida Skydiving League.

Sally Hathaway (Point), Steve Johnson (Center Outside), Jim "Bu" Klinge (Tail), Joey Jones (Center Inside) and Rob Harrick (Camera) had planned to compete at the USPA Nationals 2007 and used the FSL meet to get some competition practice for the complete line-up.

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Former 4-way world champion with DeLand Majik, Joey Jones, is the player coach for FooZa in the Center Inside slot, and Sally Hathaway has won world championship titles in IPC's female category. However, the 20.0 average for the 6-round meet in August and the 19.0 average for the 10-round meet in September were still new record results for all three FooZa players, except for Joey Jones.

FooZa did not complete the planned 100 training jumps before competing at the USPA Nationals 2007, even though the actual jump number was really close to the goal. The bad weather in Illinois prior to the competition did not allow several teams on site to include some more training jumps in the final event preparation.

The 30-pointer in Round 3 of the FSL August meet was FooZa's highest competition score this year, and the video can now be viewed on NSL-TV. FooZa enjoyed the short and efficient competition season and might even still add the NSL Championship 2007 in DeLand to this year's agenda.

More teams and competitors from Florida could be found in the field of AAA/Open Class teams at the USPA Nationals 2007. Optic Nerve, this time with Robbie Spencer, Solly Williams, Scott Keeler and Dr. Joel Shugar in the line-up (Albert Berchtold on camera), battled it out with Team Twisted (Sean Sweeney, Kristine Byrne, Nicholas Grillet, Rodney Cruce, Ken Ates on camera) at the bottom of the field.

Optic Nerve's player coach Solly Williams won the 8-way silver medals with Knight Trax a few days later and will now represent the USA in 8-way at the World Meet 2008 in France. Robbie Spencer was his Equanimity teammate when they won the 4-way bronze medals for South Africa at the World Meet in 1997.

Kris Byrne and Rodney Cruce have competed for different AAA Class teams in the past years, including several meets with Teiwaz, and joined forces in a pickup team with Golden Knight Sean Sweeney and Nick Grillet in Ottawa.

Team Twisted had bad luck with the camera in Round 2 and had to swallow a zero, which threw the team far behind Optic Nerve.

Optic Nerve and Teiwaz are now both recruiting their line-ups for the NSL Championship 2007, which will continue the never-ending rivalry between two of the longest-standing 4-way teams in the country. Dr. Joel Shugar already confirmed that Solly Williams will be back in Optic's line-up for the annual battle with Teiwaz. He is still looking for the 4th member. Teiwaz has not determined the line-up(s) for the NSL Championship 2007 yet.