posted Jul 26th, 2004 - The Texas Skydiving League was the first one to publish and provide scores of last weekend's competition. While more information, including scores from Europe, are coming in, the Northwest Skydiving League added the meet story of the July 17 event to the NWSL scores.

Saturday July 17 started out with very blue skies. Five teams were on site and eager to jump. Getting Skydive Oregon's Twinotter off the ground at 9:00 a.m. was, perhaps, the earliest take-off this season. Unfortunately, the weather did not hold for the whole day. As a result, the video was a bit unusual in rounds two and three where most teams jumped in the rain. The exits for these rounds were challenging at best.

There was so much rocking and rolling of the jump plane at exit time that most teams did not have their best exits to report. We also learned that the camera must be set for manual. While focusing on rain drop makes for some very interesting video, it also makes judging very hard. However, thanks to Cheryl McClure's experience, we got through the weather situation and made even a few more jumps before the clouds came in shutting down the DZ entirely and ending the meet after four rounds.

Two teams competed in the A Class: Chasing Tail and SkyyBulls. The team captain of Chasing Tail is Lee Roehrdanz, Corrie Veenstra is Tail, Chris Elliott at Inside Center, and Lisa Albrecht flys the Point. The second A Class team, SkyyBulls, had a great time. This was the second meet this year for Corey Parker, Brad Gorman, Frankie Bryant and Gene Delay. Kirt provided the video for their six jumps on Saturday.

The only AAA Class team to compete was Blala, this time with Tyree Wildee in the Point position, Cheryl Mclure as the Outside Center, Harry Waller Inside Center and Sparkie Doyle in the Tail slot. Kevin Shaw was flying the camera.

The AA Class had two teams competing and repeating there competition from last month's meet, the Tye Breakers and Elsinore Vengeance. The Vengeance line-up included Alan Kerser, Deb and Dave Corriena, JD Smith and Dave Patterson on video. The Tye Breakers consist of Troy Ketsdever (video), Tye Graven, Kim Kaplan, Anne McIntyre and Eric Rushing. Eric was on the ground for most of the meet with Cheryl McClure standing in for him. This race was once again very tight with only one point difference in each of the first two rounds, tied scores in round three with the meet's highest scores, and a one-point difference in round four.

A big thank you goes out to the Staff at SkyDive Oregon and to Cheryl for judging. Despite the uncooperative weather and the clouds, I believe everyone is looking forward to the next meet at Kapowsin, Washington, August 14 - 15. At this meet, we will have a Scramble Class for pick-up teams, which will include coaching and debriefing, Blue Skies - Let's Go Compete.

Harry Waller, NWSL Director