Spaceland Texas. Here we are for the 2010 USPA National Skydiving Championships of Canopy Piloting. Today was the last of the practice days and the competitors are ready to roll!! This years competition field is once again the who's who of competitive swooping. 34 competitors have entered in the open class and 16 in the advanced class. The briefing this evening was run by this years meet director, Madeline Murdoch. Eric Boyd from Skydive Spaceland gave a warm welcome to all the competitors, followed by a few words from this years USPA Controller, Bill Wenger. This years chief judge will be Marylou Laughlin who's just returned from being chief judge at the World Championships of Canopy Piloting which was concluded in Russia just a few weeks ago, so watch out boys and girls, she's on her game! Many of the competitors who are here also just returned from the event in Russia where they represented the United States. Congrats to Shannon Pilcher, Jonathan Tagle, Curt Bartholomew, Greg Windmiller, Crag Saucier, Hans Paulsen, Nick Batsch, and Brian McNenny on a job well done representing the USA. After the briefing was complete, the competitors broke up into their groups/passes and worked out their exit orders for the competition.
The competition is scheduled to begin tomorrow morning with the first take off at 8:00am sharp beginning with the open class accuracy event. Check back as we'll have photos, updates, scores, and video from time to time through out the next few days. Here's a link to the photo gallery for the event that we've started. http://www.thepdblog.com/photos/2010_uspa_national_canopy/
