posted Oct 11th, 2005 - The next NSL Profile story has been completed and is now posted. The current shooting star of 4-way Formation Skydiving competition, Natasha Montgomery, is the third DeLand Fire member featured at the NSL Profile pages.

It is an interesting aspect of these three profile stories that Gary Smith, Shannon Pilcher and Natasha Montgomery were selected for the NSL Profiles when they were far from even considering jumping together in the same team. In fact, the career stories of Shannon Pilcher and Gary Smith surely need updates.

Shannon Pilcher's story was posted in 2000. The story covers his team career with DeLand Genesis and DeLand PD Blue and does not even mention his alternate position with DeLand Majik, his professional Canopy Piloting career with the PD Factory Team, his full time coaching business, and it completely misses the whole DeLand Fire story.

The NSL Profile of Gary Smith was posted approx. one year after Shannon Pilcher's story and also misses the most successful events of his skydiving career. Gary's story ends when he got married to Susanne Tillman in February 2001. The fact that the happy couple now has two children, Luca and Yannick, shows how outdated the story is.

DeLand Majik was just formed when the profile story was posted, and Gary Smith was waiting for the confirmation of his eligibility status as a US competitor. The profile story misses the first unsuccessful attempt of DeLand Majik to win the USPA Nationals in 2002 and the following climbing to the top of the world.

Ian Bobo is the only missing DeLand Fire member in the NSL Profiles. The career story of the quiet tail of the team runs parallel with Shannon Pilcher's story and is almost identical. The NSL News will try to get Ian Bobo's information and follow up as soon as possible.

The story of DeLand Fire's alternate and former second videographer, Thomas Hughes, is already in the works, as the NSL News mentioned in the story on September 30. His NSL Profile was also prepared long before he even considered being a DeLand Fire member. The new stories will naturally be up-to-date and complete missing information of other profiles.

Natasha Montgomery's NSL Profile is the 15th career story that has been posted at the NSL website. The female competitors have had their reasonable share of this feature with five profile stories. Lise Aune of the DeLand Norgies was the first female competitor at the NSL Profiles in 2000, followed by Eliana Rodriguez in 2001.

Arianna de Benedetti's story was added in 2004. Dawn English was featured last week, even though her career story was planned to be posted already years ago. Natasha Montgomery's profile completes the 5th of the 15 career stories.

The latest profile is different than the previous ones. It compares somehow to Eliana Rodriguez' story at the time it was posted. Eliana had only 900 jumps in 2001 and was the shooting star by then. However, she was already in the sport for ten years when she won the 4-way Women's event at the world meet in 2001 with the US team Synchronicity.

The other three featured female competitors were veterans of the sport when their NSL Profile stories were posted. Natasha Montgomery is far from being a 4-way veteran with her less than three years in the sport. It was still worthwhile to explore the details of her 4-way career, which includes unique stories as she tells of her funniest moment:

Mark Kirkby explaining how passing the rock is a time to vent to other teammates: "Natasha, do you think you could stuff that hair of yours completely into your helmet? I am tired of looking at that shit flying around."

Her story also shows how sufficient resources can be used to accelerate a skydiving career, provided that somebody has the talent, endurance and the physical and mental skills to go the whole way. It seems as if the player coach concept has recently become very popular and successful, and Natasha Montgomery has used it to the full extent. The NSL News will soon follow up with other similar profile stories and compare them. John Hart of team Fastrax is another example for investing into the sport, and he went his own way to the top level of 4-way competition in a relatively short time period.

Several other player coach projects have helped the sport by forming more and new teams and accelerate the progression of individuals and teams. The NSL News will explore the history of the player coach concept and offer information that can be helpful for understanding and using similar ideas. For now, let's study Natasha's case.