Originally, the plan was to have the best two teams of each league qualifying directly for the playoffs. With a total of sixteen teams for each of the playoffs, there would have been four wild card slots for teams which did not qualify directly, but are scoring on a high level. These wild cards are supposed to keep the "olympic idea" of regional league representation and the athletic aspect in balance. With seven or even eight leagues in one division, the wild cards slots would have been too few or even completely gone.
The NSL headquarters decided to fix this situation with a compromise: there will be a fixed number of twelve slots for direct qualification and four wild cards for the total of sixteen teams. The best team of each league will directly qualify. The remaining slots up to twelve will be given to the teams in the second places in leagues with the highest participation. At the NSL Playoffs 2000, the best eight of the sixteen teams will directly qualify for the NSL Championship 2000. The championship event will consist of six qualification rounds and the actual championship event where two teams are competing against each other over two rounds. The winner is advancing to the next elimination round. The whole concept with more details is posted at the NSL 2000 page.
April 3, 2000The Americas Cup competition at Skydive Sebastian was just as exciting as it had promised. The best teams in the country and the world were prepared for an intense battle. Arizona Airspeed Vertical managed again to hold off the challenging DeLand Norgies, the Golden Knights and DeLand PD Blue. At no time during the six-round competition was the difference between the team on first place and on fourth place was more than four points. None of these four world class teams ever slipped without coming right back. Each team had flaws here and there, but the consistency of the performances and the scoring was very impressive. And all of this while judge Ted Wagner permitted no mistakes, not even a whisper.
The results of this meet are already indicating that the U.S. will have a very strong contender at this year's World Cup and next year's World Championship trying to bring the gold medal in 4-way back to the United States. It was amazing to see how far these four and other teams (Optic Nerve, Airspeed Zulu) already are this early in the season. The Norgies and PD Blue repeated their outstanding performance they already displayed last weekend at the FSL meet in Zephyrhills. PD Blue even stepped up with the pace, but lost four points due to penalties. The Golden Knights and Airspeed Vertical improved their last shown averages at meets by two points. More information, meet stories and pictures will be posted later at the AmCup competition page.
April 1, 2000The attendance at the third season meet of the Florida Skydiving League was great in three different ways. Thirteen teams competed at Skydive City in Zephyrhills - nine of the eleven registered FSL teams were present for this meet, and four additional teams used the opportunity to get competition practice or just have fun. Two of the guest teams came from overseas (DeLand Norgies from Norway, Angels from the United Kingdom) for training camps in DeLand. The Golden Knights are currently holding one of their winter camps at Skydive City. 4Z Funofit was a local pick-up team with former FSL competitors of different teams. These thirteen teams kept one Twinotter in the air all day long without any breaks. Secondly, the meet was visited by a large crowd of spectators.
Traditionally, Skydive City has a great interest of local spectators on the weekends. The public relations prior to each FSL meet added a few of them to the normal crowd. Over the whole weekend, Skydive City probably welcomed a total of more than one thousand spectators. Most of them are just enjoying the scenery with action and the colorful parachutes in the air. Some of them are potential tandem passengers and students. Finally, the local TV News channel of the CBS Network came out to catch some exciting pictures of the event, as well. A short but very positive and colorful summary was aired the same night on the 11 o'clock news show. DeLand PD Blue videographer Eric Taylor provided the freefall footage for the report. The show mentioned the event as a sports event of the Florida Skydiving League with Skydive City in Zephyrhills as the event host. Several of the Florida Skydiving League meets have already been covered by local TV stations in the past. The FSL headquarters is keeping the communication up with the media to ensure positive coverage of the FSL events.
April 1, 2000Nine teams competed at the season opener of the new Southwest Skydiving League. Five teams competed in the Open/Advanced Class, four teams in the Intermediate Class. "Airspeed Zulu" and "Elsinore Matrix" gave each other an exciting race over the first three rounds. Then, Zulu ran away to finish the six-round meet with a 16.7 average. Matrix had 15.5 average on the scoreboard at the end of the meet. Both teams improved their averages from the Valentine's Meet in February (Zulu from 14.5 to 16.7, Matrix from 14.2 to 15.5), although this draw was not an easy one. The race for the third place in the raw scores between "AZ Inertia" and "Perris High Pressure" was even closer. Inertia finished one point ahead of High Pressure. Inertia also won the Overall Class where the NSL handicap was applied. "All About Charly" won the Intermediate Class competition. The scores are posted at the Omniskore competiton page.
...more on the Skydive League's Website |
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