2009 Collegiate Championships Blog/News

Collegiates Wrap-Up

Hello to everyone from Skydive Spaceland! We hope you had as much fun here at Collegiates as we did, or at least that you had fun following along online. The weather certainly didn't help us out much, but as they say: Adapt and overcome! We certainly did, getting in all rounds of freefall skydiving events, three of four rounds of classic accuracy, and two of four rounds of sport accuracy despite 2.5 days of weather hold.

The competition held plenty of excitement, with some close races and very impressive dives. To start with, who says the military teams always win? Virginia Tech's VTSD, fresh off a gold medal performance at the 2009 USPA Nationals, killed the 4-way open division, walking off with gold and a 39-point lead over Air Force Groove. VTSD topped Groove by a whopping 12 points in each of the last two rounds, finishing with a flourish--34 points in round 6.

In 4-way advanced, Air Force impulse finished with a comfortable 17-point margin over West Point Vigilantes. The real race was for bronze in this class, with Air Force Eminence squeaking out one point ahead of West Point Abroad and Air Force Vendetta to take home the hardware.

2-way formation skydiving wasn't boring either, with the top two teams (West Point Dance Machine and West Point Prestige Worldwide) each posting at least 50 points on round 3. Dance Machine (91 points total) topped Prestige by a total of 5 points to take home the gold despite Prestige earning 5 more points in round 6, and West Point Bullge rounded out the medals with a 72.

In 2-way vertical formation skydiving, it was another close race with Enturbulators besting the Sky Monkeys by only one point, and the Krispy Robots in the bronze slot 4 points behind the Sky Monkeys.

6-way speed, much like 10-way speed at Nationals, is never boring... Air Force Silver (41.55 seconds total) beat Air Force Bliss by less than two seconds to swoop the gold, and the Stompin' Toads came in third.

In classic accuracy, U.S. Military Academy cadets swept the Novice division, with only one centimeter separating gold medalist Chester Haner from silver medalist Maxwell Love. USMA cadet Aaron Greer won intermediate with another 1-cm lead over U.S. Air Force Academy cadet Michael Walker. USAFA cadet Joshua Lemair trailed by only 2 cm to win bronze. In the Master division, USAFA cadet Alicia Bouges won with a total of 9 centimeters, and USMA cadets Christopher Gaulin and Joshua Cook trailed by only 4 and 8 cm to round out the medals.

Team accuracy brought a bit of a surprise, with an intermediate-level team, USAFA Lawn Darts, besting the master teams by nearly a meter to take home the gold. Sport accuracy was the most popular event of the meet, with a whopping 60 competitors across the novice, intermediate, and master divisions. Intermediate USAFA competitor Ryan Nissim scored the only 0 total of the meet to take home that gold medal; Kansas State University student Brad Carrender won the novice division with a 2.56-m total, and USMA cadet Orlando Zambrano scored a total of 0.25 m to win the master division.

Congratulations also to Alicia Bouges, who won the Most Competitive Collegiate award with gold or silver medals in classic accuracy, team accuracy, 4-way open, and 6-way speed (I think she might need a chiropractor after walking around with all that hardware around her neck...). Since she's at the Air Force Academy, she deferred the $500 scholarship award to VTSD.

And of course... the party following the meet was a ton of fun. :-) We enjoyed having all of you here, and we look forward to your skydiving exploits in the future!

Here are just a couple of photos from the banquet... best wishes and safe landings for 2010!

More information:

• Scores
• Team Rosters
• Medalists