• Commentary
• Medalists
• Help Us Make Nationals Better
• Photos
• World/National Records Roundup
• CamScore's Debut
• Thanks to the Home Teams & Sponsors
• By the Numbers

Commentary

The USPA National Skydiving Championships held at Skydive Spaceland have concluded, the article in Parachutist is out and we're finally starting to feel like we've recovered... What a ride! Aside from the highs of competition, the lows of weather holds, and the thrill of world and national records being set in various disciplines, there were also lots of fascinating stories happening around the DZ.

There was the top-flight performance by SDC Rhythm XP, last year's 4-way advanced gold medalists, who rolled right up on the heels of the professional teams in the open class this year, posting an 18.1 average to take the unofficial amateur championship title.

VTSD, 4-way intermediate gold medalists

Then there was VTSD, the intermediate class gold medalists, who put in heaps of training this year to improve their average from 10 to 13.1 points in six short months. Way to go, guys! And who could forget the SDC Furies XP, the long-running female 4-way team who won gold in the advanced class this year, earning the first-ever Nationals gold medal by an all-female team.

There were plenty of stories in other events as well, including the tight race in Vertical Formation Skydiving Open between Arizonal Arsenal and SDC Standard XP up until the last round (Arsenal won, but both teams posted 20+ averages... wow!). In 8-way open, the gold medalists Arizona Airspeed deferred their 8-way World Cup berth to silver medalists Golden Knights so Airspeed could focus on 4-way... The Golden Knights turned in a very skillful, creative performance in 10-way after building each round to earn the Judges' Choice award that earned them the judge's congratulations "for your creativity in bringing new ways to acomplish absolutely nothing on a skydive" (video)... The retirement of long-standing freestyle champions Flew-Id after winning yet another gold medal surprised a lot of people, and so did the performance of a women's style competitor who skipped the traditional "uniform" of skintight latex for style competition and opted for an RW bootie suit. She did quite well, perhaps a new uniform is in the making...

Arizona Arsenal, VFS 4-way open gold medalists

Jumpoffs were commonplace this year, with Dallas Fusion besting JellO Slots by one to win 8-way intermediate bronze, and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot topping Line Burn by three points in the second jump-off round to take bronze in 2-way canopy formation sequential. Women's accuracy proved particularly exciting as well, with two more jump-offs required for Cheryl Stearns to wrest the silver medal away from Angela Nichols (Elisa Tennyson won gold).

Guest competitors did quite well at Nationals this year... Egypt Hotline bested the 4-way canopy formation rotation gold medalists Sebastian Rots by 6 points, but of course they were ineligible for a medal as a guest team... Similar situations existed for both canopy piloting divisions, with Manoel Neto earning the highest score in CP advanced and Marat Leiras topping the field in CP open. CSC Pareto Optimal finished one point out of the medals in 4-way intermediate, Marius Ivascu tied silver medalist James Hayhurst in men's accuracy, and Scott Borghese earned the third-best score in men's style.

And although winds hampered both accuracy and canopy piloting, both events finished with powerfully good competitors holding their edge with super-fast and super-slow canopies...

As you can see, we had a great time having you all here at Skydive Spaceland, and we hope to get the chance to do it again. We'd like to thank you all for competing, and we hope you'll come back next time! We'd also love to get your opinions on how we can make next time even better; at your convenience, please take a few minutes to fill out our Nationals survey and let us know your thoughts!

For day-by-day commentary and photos of Nationals, see the Nationals blog.

Medalists

Congratulations to all the Nationals medalists! Complete results and team rosters/photos at uspanationals.com.

Help Us Make Nationals Better

Thanks to all of you for competing at the 2009 USPA Nationals... can we ask you for one more favor? We'd like to get your opinions on this year's Nationals so Skydive Spaceland and USPA can work on making future Nationals suit your needs even better. Please take a few minutes to complete our survey, and please share the link with your friends and family who just followed the competition online or in person. We want to take care of their needs too!

Take the 2009 USPA Nationals survey

Competition Photos

You have probably already seen the photos in parachutist. Now see what you missed by going to the photo gallery on Skydive Spaceland's website. This event was super fun and exciting and there's photos prove it!

Spaceland Force claimed a new world record 45-point 4-way dive.
Video

World/National Records Roundup

The Nationals was quite exciting in terms of record-setting; three skydives potentially qualified as new world records and five as new U.S. national and/or state records. Not all of the skydives will be certified as records for various reasons, such as team members not being members of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale at the time the skydive was made or if there is not yet a national/state record category for a particular dive. However, they were certainly great skydives regardless, and jumpers can petition the U.S. state record program committee to add categories.

Here's the rundown of the potentially record-setting skydives:

• World record longest formation skydiving sequence (4-way): Spaceland Force, 45 formations (pending FAI approval). Also a new national and state record (TX). Previous world record 44 formations, previous national record 39 formations.
• National/state record longest formation skydiving sequence, feminine (4-way): SDC Furies XP, 23 points. Superseded in the same day by Spaceland Blue's 26 points. Also a state record (TX).
• National/state record longest formation skydiving sequence, feminine (8-way): Perris Moxie, 15 points (national record category not yet established)
• Canopy Piloting?? Nat? 2009, Texas, 156.73m: Greg WINDMILLER
• State: 2009, Texas, 3.234sec, GW
• World/national/state record longest canopy formation sequence (4-way): Clean Air, 14 points (not submitted to FAI at this time). Current world/national record 12 formations, 2006. No current state record.
• World/national/state record longest canopy formation sequence (2-way): Sebastian Juan, 21 formations (round 1), 22 formations (round 6). Not submitted to FAI at this time. Current world record: 20 formations. Current national record: 16 formations. No current state record.

Note: The U.S. national/state record program was recently taken over from the National Aeronautic Association and previous records are incomplete; if you have a national or state record to submit, please see www.uspa.org.

CamScore's Debut

This year the CamScore scoring system made its Nationals debut, taking the place of the Omniskore system that has been used to score Nationals since 1994. Overall, the system was a smashing success as it allowed dubbing of any type/encoding of video directly to a video server, negating any video compatibility issues and removing the need for DVD/VHS tapes for judging. Thus, juding was able to proceed far more quickly than at previous Nationals, which was good for competitors, judges, and spectators. The judges even got breaks during the day and were finished within about a half-hour after the last load, unlike the late-night judging marathons common in earlier Nationals.

Despite a few technical challenges in the laser gate system set up for Skydive Spaceland's mammoth swoop pond, the CamScore system earned high praise from nearly everyone, especially the judges. Even Tim Wagner, judge and co-founder of Omniskore, embraced the system (see his opinions on CamScore vs. Omniskore on the Nationals blog).

Skydive Spaceland has licensed North American rights to the CamScore system. For information on licensing the system for a competition in North America, call 281-369-3337 or email manifest@skydivespaceland.com.

Thanks to the Home Teams & Sponsors

I wanted to give a big Thanks to our home teams. As many of you know it takes years of practice and dedication to compete and become a champion. Although the direction of most teams is not to become a champion but to accomplish ones personal goals. I hope you achieved your goals this year and thanks for choosing Spaceland as your home.

Last but certainly not least, we'd like to thank the Nationals Sponsors who helped us make the 2009 USPA Nationals a success.

By the Numbers

Here are a few of the statistics from Nationals, just for fun...

• Our brand-new website for covering results, registration, commentary, and everything else about Nationals, www.USPAnationals.com, received nearly 13,700 visitors during the event. They viewed nearly 500,000 webpages and spent nearly 9 minutes on the site, on average.
• LIVE FEED of the competition totaled 588,848.92 total viewer minutes!!!!!!
• 559 total competitors (all events)
• 234 total teams (all events)
• 552 loads
• 9,292 jumps
• 410 Tandems

Have fun and play safe! We look forward to seeing you soon at Skydive Spaceland!

Comments? Email Eric: eric@skydivespaceland.com.