News

Hey everyone

Well we’re into the final month of the first SASL season and some of you have been wondering where the draw is. As the final competition of the season, the April competition will be SA Nationals 2010. All you need to do is enter Nationals and you’re automatically entered into SASL April. The various categories will be weighted and your usual competitor weighting will be applied to come to the results.

FS Nationals is being held at Skydive Xtreme from 27-30 April and entries close on 12 April, so get your entries in! It promises to be a bumper FS competition with 6 novice, 3 intermediate and 5 open teams expected so far. Remember that Nationals is not only for the serious teams who want to represent South Africa. SA Nationals is an invaluable learning opportunity and heaps of fun. There are serious teams who have trained all year for this one competition, there are new teams starting out and there groups of friends who want to go have fun together. However you like to skydive, Nationals offers a great format to do it in. Learn from others, meet jumpers from other regions and get your name on the SASL leader board.

Atmo has experienced some teething problems and has therefore been put on hold until these can be sorted out.

We’d like to thank all of you for your support. We have really enjoyed the first season. More competition is stil needed for our jumpers and judges and hopefully we have further exposed the participating disciplines. We’re gearing up for the next season, which is planned to start in September 2010. We hope to secure exciting prizes again and anyone who would like to contribute financially or otherwise to making Season 2 better than Season 1, please let us know.

Lastly, but not the least - March’s results have been posted and the leaderboards updated.

See you at Nationals!

Game ON!

First up: Congratulations to Brendon Delate on winning the first SASL Freefly league!

Brendon has won free freefly coaching jumps with Jean-Philippe this weekend at JSC. The PAC Partnership already sponsored Jean-Phillippe’s slot, but now Brendon will get his own slots for free too! That is a really awesome prize.

For FS and Atmo, keep jumping - the freefly league was shortened due to the timing of Jean-Philippe's visit, but the rest of SASL continues for a few more months still. That means you still have a chance to knock the leaders off their rung on the ladder.. but get cracking, because each month in the lead gives them a bigger advantage over the rest.

FS RACE TO ITALY
The FS league has really heated up recently, and shows interesting feedback on the weighting system. Currently, Karen Fourie is leading with 40 points but Stuart Robinson and Pierre van den Berg are nipping at her heels with 38 points each. Why is this interesting? Well, Karen has 145 jumps and no tunnel while Stuart and Pierre are very experienced jumpers with over 1000 jumps and tunnel time behind their names.

Will the 2 seniors pick up some 2-ways in Feb and March to try and bump Karen? Is Karen up for the challenge? This is the kind of race SASL was looking for. February will certainly be interesting.

FEBRUARY ACTIVITY
After a quiet Christmas period, we’re expecting activity to pick up again this month. With the upcoming FS skills camp at Robertson (next weekend) and the Robertson Rumble (27th-28th Feb) we’re expecting to see some Cape action on the February leader board.

WE NEED EACH OTHER
Please keep the entries coming – even if your jump isn’t your proudest moment or you only managed to get one round in. Not only can you get valuable feedback on your jumps from coaches and judges (log onto the SASL website, go to MY STUFF (far right link), then go to MY JUMPS and click on the speech bubble to the right of your month’s submissions), but it makes the competition fuller and lets us know that you’re in support of the league. Even if you’re not top of the league, we still see pockets of “sub-competitions” emerging with teams and people competing furiously with those at a similar level.

We also encourage you to email us with feedback, questions and concerns about the league to help us improve. We have had some really valuable feedback from you already and we hope it will improve the league for you. Thank you.

Hit it hard this month!

Game ON!

The November jumps have been judged and the leader boards have been updated.

If you log on and go to “My Jumps” you can see the scores and judges’ feedback from your jumps. This feedback is valuable for improving your skydiving and for improving your score without necessarily improving your skydiving.

Karen Fourie is still leading the individual pack in FS, and keeps strengthening her place there. Brendon Delate is on top of the Freefly individual board, and we have our first Atmonauti entrants with Marco Ciocca and Laurence Collard.

On the FS 4-way advanced side, November seemed to be a comedy of errors for all involved. Bad weather, incorrect sequences (!!), lost footage and lost team members have made this category interesting this month.

December is no different from any of the other months in the SASL season – if you don’t enter you lose an opportunity to score points. With many DZs closing for the Christmas period, make sure you do your SASL rounds early to grab a place on the leader board.

Cape Town, Durbs, EP? Where ARE you guys? Don’t let Gauteng show you up. Get out there and do some jumps. We’d like to see more entries from the smaller DZs and the coastal DZs. If you’re not sure where to begin or need help getting there, give your SASL rep or a SASL committee member a shout.

Let’s compete!

The South African Skydiving League
Game ON!

Don’t forget you have only one weekend left in which to complete the November rounds for SASL. Last month saw some interesting results (if you haven’t had a look yet, check out the leader boards. These results prove that it’s worthwhile to enter no matter what your experience level.

A huge congratulations goes out to Karen Fourie, who is currently in the lead for FS after October’s results. Karen is one of the least experienced jumpers in the league, and these results reflect how she is excelling beyond her experience level. As proof that the formula is not unfairly favouring the novice jumpers, we are seeing very experienced jumpers placing high in the league too. Congratulations to Tracy Delate, who with only around 40 jumps, placed 7th in October’s results.

The game is certainly on for November. We also have some new sponsors on board (thanks to Nashua and Simbalism) and continue in our quest to keep adding to the prizes and improving the league. Please send us your feedback (positive or negative) to help us to deliver the league jumpers want.

If you’re looking for a break from freefall (what?! Never!), get yourself out to JSC this weekend to witness the world’s greatest swoopers in action. Canopy pilots from all over the world have already started arriving for training at JSC for the World Cup in Canopy Piloting and the competition kicks off on Tuesday. The altitude and climate here in South Africa give this World Cup excellent potential for world records to be broken and if you haven’t watched canopy piloting at this level, you’re missing out! Take this rare opportunity while we have it and get out to watch this event live. It’s spectacular!

Most importantly, come and support your country at a world event. Our talented and dedicated team have trained hard and are making a great name for themselves in swooping . We’re very proud to have them represent us.

Rob Kruger, Christopher Teague, Selwyn Johnson, Pierre Marais Badenhorst, Dian Kemp, Nicholas Helfrich, Bertus de Beer, SASL wish you the best of luck, a fantastic meet and safe swoops next week. We can’t wait!

The South African Skydiving League
Game ON!

SASL has been up and running for almost a month now. We have kept the first results under wraps this month but will publish them at the end of the month when we have all the October entries in. Next month we won't be so mean and will publish results as they are judged.

After SASL's first 3 weeks, we thought you might be interested to see who is registering with SASL. We are especially pleased to see the spread of experience levels. This indicates we are achieving one of our important goals with the league: to give everyone a competition worth entering. It's great to see so many novice jumpers keen and entering the event.

Thanks to everyone for your support. Let's keep the league strong and a permanent fixture on the skydiving calendar!

The South African Skydiving League
Game ON!

Are you ready? Have you registered? SASL is here at last and kicking off in style at the 2009 tonto Boogie.

As you hopefully know by now, you can participate from any PASA dropzone, but if you're after spot prizes, some guidance, a wicked party, and a great vibe, get your butt out to JSC on the 3rd and 4th of October to join SASL and the Annual tonto Boogie - a weekend of South African record attempts, competitions in various disciplines, good times with friends old and new and, of course, celebration of the life of tonto, a man who touched all of us - even those who never met him - through friendship, knowledge, guidance, instruction, and development of our sport.

If you can't make it to the tonto Boogie, you have no excuse not to enter - just three jumps, submitted online or by drop-off any time until the last Monday of October, will ensure that you start earning your league points from the beginning, and better your chances of being the final winner. And you don't even have to find a committed team - you only need to do this month's draw with your team and you can hop onto another team next month without losing any individual points or lessening your chances of winning the league and claiming the loot. Check out the rules to see how it works and how we all get to play despite our different experience levels, locations, schedules and commitment.

If you have any questions or need any help, contact your dropzone's SASL rep (see below) or contact the SASL committee directly by emailing GameON@Skyleague.co.za. We'll have the most appropriate committee member contact you to answer all your questions and help you get your piece of SASL action.

The South African Skydiving League
Game ON!