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billvon

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I'd hypothesize a team that trained really hard on only the Intermediate draw getting 11's and 12's and 13's (medal contention, but still competitive) - and then at the very end of the season really had a great learning ramp



Well, they had a 15.3 at collegiates very, very early in the year, so I don't think that changed for them at the very end of the year.

But just to be clear, I'm not saying that entering intermediate was wrong of them to do. That decision was for them to make, and I can't say that I blame them, or that I wouldn't do the same thing if I had been in their shoes.

I just argued JT's point that they didn't know they were going in to a class with no real competition. The 13 years of history I looked at indicates that if you're a 15 point team in intermediate (which they had already demonstrated that they were), you're going to win the thing by a long shot, and they did.

Again, congratulations to AF Impulse, Spaceland Mamba, and AF Eminence for a great meet!

"If all you ever do is all you ever did, then all you'll ever get is all you ever got."

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Speaking as someone who was jumping in intermediate, when they posted the 20 in round 1, it was pretty disheartening. I mean, my team didn't have any chance of winning, but it was like.... _really_!? a 20?
~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

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Speaking as someone who was jumping in intermediate, when they posted the 20 in round 1, it was pretty disheartening. I mean, my team didn't have any chance of winning, but it was like.... _really_!? a 20?



I can relate! We posted an 11 in round one, and while it wasn't our best effort, we would have never imagined that it would start us out down by nine points!

Still, I can understand why if your two options were to obliterate the intermediate class, or be a middle of the pack advanced team, why you'd choose the first option. I probably would have too! :P

I'm sure AF Impulse wouldn't have looked forward to competing in advanced against VTSD/Carolina Turbo XP who posted a 23 something to their 15.3 at collegiates, and then went on to win advanced with a 14.5 despite the more difficult draw.

"If all you ever do is all you ever did, then all you'll ever get is all you ever got."

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I'm just curious as to what everyone's opinion is for the two air force teams to enter into the Collegiate Nationals in December, knowing how well they did in this Nationals.

Just some food for thught. The air force team cadets maintain one of the highest GPA's at the Academy. They spend most of their time in the jump program teaching 900 other cadets how to leave an airplane, by themselves, 5 times from a moving airplane. They give up every Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and every spring break to train. While at the Academy, they take on anywhere from 18-28 credits a semester while living in a room smaller than the team rooms at Nationals.

They give up so many freedoms that most college kids take for granted. Oh by the way, besides the 20+ credits they are taking, they still have inspections, marching and other military training to conduct on top of that.

Now don't get me wrong, a lot of peolpe think they are spoiled and get too many privledges, especially in skydiving. That maybe so. But not many colleges in the US that I'm aware of, do they deploy 6-18months later to defend their country and possibly make the ultimate sacrifice. I wish I would have studied my ass off and made the grades to get into a program that they are into.

Not sure how many peolpe know this. Tha Academy gets about 11000 applications a year and accepts about 1100 of them. So out of the 4400 student cadets that ar going to college, only 50 of them are on the Wings of Blue parachute team, and only 20 of those 50 are in 4way and freeflying. From the time they finish AFF they have about 18 months total to "train" together. The "train" is about 20-50 jumps for tghe entire 18 months, and not all at one time.

Alot of you have good arguements for being opposed for the AF teams to compete at the intermediate catagory, and I understand your fustrations. Howver if you could see the amount of dedication these kids put in to getting to where they are, and the amount of personal time and money they put into it that big Air Force doesn't cover, it might change your opinion a little.

Most of they kids on both Air Force teams have less than 400 jumps. But the time and dedication they put into it is what makes them the way they are.

If you have any doubt as to the determination these kids have, talked to people who got to watch them land their 290 square foot classic accuracy canopies in between trees and trailer parks at the dropzone, from winds that left their exit point 1.5-2 miles from the dropzone. Very impressive to the point most other competitiors comented they woud never jump in those conditions with those canopies.

There is a level of professinalism from these cadets that only comes from the environment in which they are growing up in.

Could they compete in the Advanced. Sure they could, but they are not advance skydivers with B and C licenses. But they are very dedicated with the experience that they do have, and I think thats good enough.

My two cents.....

Air Force Eminenece Videographer

PS, I had 6 video busts...by no means am I even remotely close to being a descent vidiot!
Brad

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Could they compete in the Advanced. Sure they could, but they are not advance skydivers with B and C licenses. But they are very dedicated with the experience that they do have, and I think thats good enough.



Could you clarify this? Are you saying that the AF cadets do not have B licenses?

The reason I ask is that you have to have at least a B license to compete in the Int or Adv classes in 4 way. So if the cadets don't even have a B license, how are they competing?

I'm not going to argue whether they should have competed in Int or Adv. I think that is something that they have to decide themselves. I'm sure that they had an idea of what kind of avg they could score, 6 month, 3 months, and 1 month ago. If they decided a month ago that they had an average that would blow away the competition and they decided to still go intermediate, knowing that they would have no competition...that's their choice.

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I think it was just awkward phrasing. I read it as "Since they have B or C licenses, you can't call them advanced skydivers."
"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

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Honestly if I was still in college I wouldn't even bother showing up looking for a medal since its been years (outside of VT last year) since a civilian team has even came close to medaling.

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Name R1 R2 R3 R4 R6 R5 Total Rank
Air Force Impulse (AF) 12 10 12 15 19 24 92 1
West Point Vigilantes (USMA) 10 11 9 10 20 15 75 2
Air Force Eminence (AF) 10 8 10 11 12 16 67 3
West Point Abroad (USMA) 10 9 6 10 17 14 66 4T
Air Force Vendetta (AF) 9 6 11 12 13 15 66 4T
Ductape (Georgia Tech) 8 9 6 12 13 16 64 6
DSS (Embry Riddle) 6 5 7 7 14 7 46 7
Jarlsbergs 4way (Various) 5 5 6 7 11 6 40 8
Navy Squidbillies (NA) 3 3 5 0 0 0 11 W/D


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Name R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 Total Rank
VTSD (Virginia Tech) 19 15 17 22 31 34 138 1
Air Force Groove (WOB) 15 15 14 15 18 22 99 2
West Point Apocalypse (USMA) 11 12 10 12 20 22 87 3
Air Force Epic (WOB) 6 7 8 9 12 7 49 4
6 Balls Corner Pocket (AF) 10 3 7 4 13 11 48 5



Most colleges don't even have a team let alone sponsor and buy the team tunnel time and provide equipment to them. Your average college skydiver has to decide if they are going to do 50-75 jumps in a year or buy a used rig and 10 jumps for the year since that is all of the money they have managed to scrape together once they dropped the thousands to get off student status.

Going back to the subject of the USPA Nationals is it time to potentially propose a "sponsorship" clause to the UPSA to encourage/force teams that are being sponsored with free/reduced jumps or tunnel time/gear to move to the advanced level? If so where would the line need to be drawn at since most DZ's offer team rates for all skill levels? Is it the team members need to pay at least 75% of their way out of pocket? More or less from there?
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

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Don't know what happened this year. Maybe I don't know where to look but up until last year Omniskore was great! Nobody could cover Nationals like Tim. I only know the Tim's (T1 And T2) through the Omniskore site but they had a lot of competition experience. T2 brought coverage, commentary and still pictures that were just excellent. Eventually they would get the videos up and you could download the jumps you wanted to see but it was the commentary Tim brought to the table I enjoyed the most. Those guys and even their Dad covered the Nationals for a long time so I understand their need to move on, our loss.

Last year USPANationals.com took over as the best coverage but their coverage and commentary was only fair. What they did bring was streaming videos, sometimes live if I remember right. A lot of people really seemed to enjoy that.

This year I don't know what happened. It's hard to believe that USPA would just pull the plug. I do know that some board members believe that nobody not at the Nationals gives a crap about it. Maybe they are right, maybe I was the only one that used to live by the refresh button during Nationals in the Omniskore days.

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Anyone know who won the Godfrog this year?



From OmniSkore Justpostit on Facebook: "Golden Knights win the GodFrog award."



Cool. I think that's 2 in a row.

Ooops - no, they last won it in 2008. It's the 5th time the Knights have had it.

www.godfrog.org
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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Anyone know who won the Godfrog this year?



From OmniSkore Justpostit on Facebook: "Golden Knights win the GodFrog award."



Cool. I think that's 2 in a row.

Ooops - no, they last won it in 2008. It's the 5th time the Knights have had it.

www.godfrog.org



"The winning team is responsible for choosing its successor at the following Nationals."

Wouldn't it be considered poor form to award it to themselves?
What do you call a beautiful, sunny day that comes after two cloudy, rainy
ones? -- Monday.

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Going back to the subject of the USPA Nationals is it time to potentially propose a "sponsorship" clause to the UPSA to encourage/force teams that are being sponsored with free/reduced jumps or tunnel time/gear to move to the advanced level? If so where would the line need to be drawn at since most DZ's offer team rates for all skill levels? Is it the team members need to pay at least 75% of their way out of pocket? More or less from there?



That would be a nightmare to enforce though, even more so than a jump numbers limit for intermediate. Competitors could always fudge the team's financials. And they may or may not be caught. Then you get a "he said she said" thing going on before, during, or after nationals.

If someone rich with about 400 jumps had found 3 other similarly-experienced jumpers and paid for all their training jumps and tunnel time and then they won gold this year in intermediate, would people complain then too?

I say leave it as is and kudos to the air force teams!

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There was alot of discussion about what they were doing in Intermediate...Seniors explains it...send your a team to win a medal in the c leauge since it is their last year....bs
low jump numbers and way alot of tunnel time does not explain it...they shoulda gone in advanced...winning in a lesser leauge than you coulda been in is cheap...



Everytime a team like Air Force Impulse wins, a certain group of people starts wining and crying in public forums.

Let me break it to you: these guys deserved their gold medals because they were better than their rivals. They had the right lineup, they trained hard, and perhaps as a group they were more talented than anyone else in the intermediate class this year. Needless to mention, they were officially eligible to compete in the intermediate division. In my book, they deserve more respect than lineups who spend many years and thousands of jumps trying to get that intermediate medals instead of moving up to advanced class. I find it very amusing when "seasoned" intermediate competitors whose personal 4-way experience in terms of jump numbers and years of competition is far greater that the cumulative experience of the whole young team complain that a bunch of kids sand bagged them (!).
Its also great to see teams like Impulse stepping up and beating PC teams in the advanced class. Of course there is nothing wrong with PC teams and they are a great way to learn faster. However I always enjoy when, at the top of the stack, PC teams get beaten by 4 regular guys or girls who have talent, commitment, and determination to win.

As far as their scoring level and the gap between Impulse and other teams, lets look at the following examples from the history of Intermediate competition.

2000 Nationals: DeLand Tunnel Rage won intermediate with a 15.3 average over 6 rounds and they scored 22 in round 3.
2001 Nationals: Formula 4 won with a 14 average (again, over 6 rounds)
2002 Nationals: Juggernaut won with a 14.1 average (and people still wine about Juggs).

How do these scores compare with Impulse's 14.6 average?

Interestingly, several former members of Tunnel Rage and Formula4 became accomplished world class competitors and two former Juggs won the gold in the advanced class year after winning the gold in the intermediate.

Perhaps some of these air force kids are made from the same material and have the similar potential?

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Hey Bwilling... I'd be careful with your words as "baby killing"... i had about 250 jumps when we averaged a 23.0 at collegiates in 2009



And how much tunnel time? Number of jumps means less than ever in this sport right now! :ph34r:

And don't think 'baby killing' is a bad thing. My team would love to win big enough next year to be called 'baby killers'! :D

"If all you ever do is all you ever did, then all you'll ever get is all you ever got."

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Hey Bwilling... I'd be careful with your words as "baby killing"... i had about 250 jumps when we averaged a 23.0 at collegiates in 2009 ;).


...and with that 23.0 average did you go on to the intermediate level at nationals just so you could easily get a gold medal with no competition?

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Hey Bwilling... I'd be careful with your words as "baby killing"... i had about 250 jumps when we averaged a 23.0 at collegiates in 2009 ;).


...and with that 23.0 average did you go on to the intermediate level at nationals just so you could easily get a gold medal with no competition?


Let me bring you up to speed big guy-

1) October 2009 Nationals Intermediate- 13.1avg (AA Draw).

2) December 2009 Collegiate Nationals Open - 23.0avg (A Draw),

3) September 2010 Nationals Advanced- 14.5avg (AAA Draw)


So to answer your question, no. Absolutely not. The team entered the Int. Nats expecting nothing... it'd take one hell of a character to expect a victory in his first Nats appearance with just over 200 jumps, 10 tunnel hours, just barely 20 years old, and 15 months in the sport.... someone like that wouldn't find teammates ;).


I know it's not a huge deal, but I'll give you a brief background of this team just to clear up any arguments:)
The team was created at Virginia Tech because we were the only 4 jumpers in the club that had a license... The experience levels on the team, at creation, ranged from 100 to 400 jumps. We were all (and still are) poor college skydiver kids, but luckily we worked well together. With Collegiate Nats being our team's original purpose, US Nats came up along the way as kind of a "Sure, why not? Let's see what happens" type deal. We knew the Academy teams would be there, so it would be a good way to see what we're up against for Collegiates 2 months later. We ended up doing pretty well at US Nats, and therefor had a better feeling about Collegiates than we did in the beginning. The team did maybe 30 training jumps between the 2 meets, and showed up at Collegiates rather nervous about what the Academies had been up to since we'd seen them last. The best way to secure a loss is to assume a victory. The Academies have incredible programs with incredible coaching and an even more impressive resume. Definitely not a program to ignore. There may have been a lineup change on the most competitive Academy team between the meets, I'm not 100% on that information... but we just flew our game in the highest class we possibly could. Again, the meet turned out well for our team. I think the reason this meet got so much attention was not because of our high scores, but because it was the first time in 15 or so years that the USAFA had not stood in the center of the podium.... Shannon Pilcher and Ian Bobo were on the last civilian team to stand in the center (Georgia Tech).

After Collegiates, we changed from VTSD to Carolina Turbo XP. Training began for the Advanced class at US Nats, and we pushed forward. The new divepool in the Adv. class includes the remaining 6 blocks, all of which rotate our positions back and forth throughout the skydive. A pretty significant leap in draw difficulty to say the least. Last month CTXP headed to Chicago for US Nats, and again the dedication and desire paid off. This meet was extremely nerve racking until round 10 had posted... Team Fallout was bouncing around at the top with us the entire meet, another extremely impressive team who made it no easy task nor gave us even a single breath of fresh air until the end. Again, hats off to that crew- Great flying through all 10 rounds, and we thank them for such a close and high tension meet B|.

Carolina Turbo XP is now an Open class team, with a long road and many years ahead of them.


The 4 of us will not be competing at Collegiates ever again.



I Hope that helps clear our name to those against us ;)





Also, Bwilling, I had like 11 or 12 tunnel hours at the time we competed in Collegiates...
http://www.turboskydiving.com

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Also, Bwilling, I had like 11 or 12 tunnel hours at the time we competed in Collegiates...



That adds a little more perspective than just saying 'but I only had 250 jumps'! :ph34r:

I actually knew that because I talked to you guys a bit after Nationals in 2009, so I was kinda busting your chops. Sorry!

But trust me, I know even with the tunnel thrown in what you guys did in 2009 was nothing short of impressive, and what you did in 2010 was nothing short of record breaking. Congratulations!

BTW, I've got some great video and stills of Ben back flying under a Q launch with some of the locals at SDD if you want to see them. :P

"If all you ever do is all you ever did, then all you'll ever get is all you ever got."

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Psst, dude, she is a very pretty Girl, just sayin'

Good job on the Collegiate's and Nat's by the way.

Matt


Why thanks Matt ;)
First of all I would like to clarify that I am not at all upset at Va Tech for entering in ADVANCED when you scored a 23.0 average in Collegiate's. I think that VT made the right choice to not enter in intermediate but to kick ass in advanced and win gold. I think they did the right thing. The problem I have is with a team that was clearly outclassing everyone in intermediates. Regardless of their jump numbers were "low" they had a lot of tunnel time and funding to support their success. Don't tell me that they "didn't know of their skill level" going into nationals. I don't believe it...

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I sincerely apologize for the mix up B|.

BUT, the term 'clearly outclassing' the intermediate class couldn't be further from the truth. We averaged 13.1, and if you look at the past few years of intermediate scores, we're towards the bottom end of the gold winning group... On top of that, not a single person on our team had ever competed in US Nationals prior to our 2009 meet. You must be crazy to think we should have chosen to fly Advanced class at our first time ever competing nationally. We knew our skill level full well. We had been averaging in training right about what we averaged in 2009, and like I said before, that average very often would not have won. If we had an average prior to Intermediate competition that was 5pts higher than the 10 previous winners, yes we would have competed higher. But not getting higher than a 14avg in training (judged by ourselves mind you), is by no means ground for moving to a higher class.

The piece of your rebuttal that bothers me most, however, is this assumption of Virginia Tech funding the team. Every single jump, every single second in the tunnel, every minute of coaching, every thread that composed our rigs and team suits were all paid from the pockets of us 4 college students. Striving to make ends meet, working multiple jobs over the summer, and packing 5 people in one car and driving 3 hours each way to stay in tents at the dropzone don't really sound like a well funded team. We had very few training jumps and tunnel time together, and that medal was earned on the ground. We built a mock-up of the otter at our house in Blacksburg, and several nights a week we would engineer a 10rd draw, as if competition were the next morning. We would practice exits all through the week, we would walk dives on our own time, visual the formations, and just immerse ourselves as deeply as we could in 4way with our tiny budget that restricted us from the air so much.

I knew exactly what our average would be going into Intermediate Nats 2009. Do some research before you start pointing fingers... please. I knew my skill level very well, I knew my teammate's skill levels, and I knew our team's skill level- and that was a skill level that in most of the previous years was not sufficient enough to carry home a gold. So please, believe it.

Once again, I don't mean to come off aggressive. But please do some research first. Where in the world did you ever hear that we were funded from the school, or funded from anybody? That is just insulting to try and blame our success on someone else's checkbook. Truly a slap to the face. My 3 best friends and I earned that medal through extremely hard work, the deepest most sincere desire to succeed, and a huge long struggle to make ends meet to fund the relatively thin training plan. Point your finger towards the other college teams which actually are funded. Look at their jump numbers. Look at their tunnel time. Look at their coaching staff. Look at their budget from the school. And finally, look at the scores. Then you tell me who earned it. Tell me which team wanted it.



Bwilling- Sorry again to get to you last on each of my posts haha... but I would love to see those pictures... I'll happily send some good material back your way to wave in his face as well ;).

http://www.turboskydiving.com

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Okay I am totally confused by your post.
First of all, did virginia tech compete in intermediate this year? no... I was complaining about another team, not VT, that I felt was not in the right competition class for nationals at 2010. I am not discussing 2009 at all...
As far as claiming that you were funded by someone... look at my posts... I never said that nor did I even infer that. I am not sure why you are getting angry at me! My beef is not with you and your team.
Also your team is not the only team that has struggled with lack of budget. My school didn't give me a penny either and I worked 3 jobs all throughout the years in college, on top of going to school full time pursuing a difficult degree. One of the jobs I worked at was a fast food place just so that I could eat something for that day. I also purchased everything that I have...
..but that's besides the point... please YOU do the research and look at my posts before POINTING fingers at me!
If you reread my posts I am actually patting your team on the back for making the right decision and competing in advanced for 2010.... and as I said... you kicked ass...
I hope this clears things up.

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