Jumping Journal: January 04, 2005

The start of another high school jumping season.  Normally, I end up taking two or three jumps with the kids while they practice.  I try to get to the hill early and grab a few jumps until the tressel starts to get crowded.  Once everyone gets there I head inside and warm up and wait for the competition to start.  I can already see that the first part of this year is already going to be rather different than the past several years.

 

One big difference is that all the high school coaches got fed up with having 60-70 kids per meet.  It would typically take an 1-1.5 hours to get through the meet.  The meets were just too long and the markers, coaches, judges, etc were all getting a little tired of such long meets.

 

When I first moved up here theirwas two separate divisions.  One division jumped the smaller hills, 25m and smaller, the other division would go up to 35m hills.  Back in, if I remember correctly, 2003, they merged the divisions into one and everybody would jump on hills up to 35m.  Instead of having 30-35 jumpers at each meet now they had 60-70 jumpers at each meet.  I've spent many Wednesday evenings freezing my butt off trying to stay warm while watching and videoing the meets.

 

This year they kept the one division concept but decided to have two meets each week and go back to having smaller meets, at least until the pre-state and state meet in early-mid February.  Tonight I came to realize that my Wednesday evening jumping may take a noticeable change.  I may very well end up getting a few more jumps than normal this January on Wednesday evenings.

 

The high school was finished in 33 minutes.  All the coaches were commenting about how quick it went, none of them could ever remember a meet going by so fast.  I've been going to the meets since 2001 and I don't ever remember a meet that went by that fast.  I didn't have gloves on, and my hands didn't get cold.  All in all it was one of the strangest high school meets I've attended.

 

Tonight started out pretty decent.  I decided that I had enough and have started to think about doing something in several days that I hadn't planned on doing.  Granted, I knew thinking this very thought would trigger my mind, I just didn't really know which way it would trigger it.  I knew within a jump or two I would be able to tell which way things were going to go.

 

I took the first jump.  It was quite different from last night.  A nice smooth jump off the 25 at Storrs Hill.  It appeared things were changing for the better, then again what else should I have expected.  The mind is just trying to cooperate real nice like to make me forget about what it's up to.  I don't believe a second of it.

 

The second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh jumps were all better as well.  I think I only took seven jumps but I may have had an eighth jump.  I kinda lost count after five.  I'm just not use to getting so many jumps with the high school kids around.  I'm still trying to figure out if it's the longer skis or some difference in my technique.  I am noticing something different about the jumps, I definitely can't explain it.

 

Knowing my mindset, tomorrow evening should be real interesting.

 

Crash

Myth #2 Debunked, Part 4

Some people have to tendency to think that all media publicity is good.  And they are right to a certain extent.  I have spent a lot of my time over the past several summers, this past summer being a major exception, going to hot air balloon shows.  The pilots love it when the news of a hot air balloon crash hits the news.  It sends paying customers their way.  The paying customers think that the sport is dangerous and it brings all the crazies out to go fly in a balloon.

 

Not all publicity that you get can be good though.  Essentially all the media I have seen for the sport of ski jumping over the past 15 years has been negative.  All of the media coverage tries to dissuade people from jumping instead of encouraging them to jump.  I'll focus on this again tomorrow.

 

Tonight has been an interesting evening.  I started the evening off watching the first high school jump meet of the year.  Yes, New Hampshire is still the only state in the United States that has high school ski jumping.  Now most people are settled back in their seats right now, 9:45PM EST, watching the Rose Bowl game, the end of another college football season.

 

Oh yes, college sports...I can just hear it now.

 

The NCAA killed the sport of ski jumping

 

Don't you just love these excuses, they fly around like a chicken with it's head chopped off.  Remember the exercise from day one...how many fingers were pointing back at you when you was pointing at someone else.

 

Here's a link to an interesting article about a, err, college sport.  The link will only show part of the article, but it's the part that is the most important.  I have also copied that part of the article below the link.

 

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=UL&p_theme=ul&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&s_dispstring=allfields(skydiving)%20AND%20date(11/7/2003%20to%2011/7/2003)&p_field_date-0=YMD_date&p_params_date-0=date:B,E&p_text_date-0=11/7/2003%20to%2011/7/2003)&p_field_advanced-0=&p_text_advanced-0=("skydiving")&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&xcal_useweights=no

 

Published on November 7, 2003, Article 1 of 1 found.

DWC student has a passion for jumping from airplanes Publication: New Hampshire Union Leader (Manchester, NH) Page Number: c1

DRAG RACING I could handle, but I'm drawing the line at leaping from a small airplane. It's not the glorious free-fall that concerns me. Just the sudden stop. So you'll have to take the word of Erin Donovan, a Daniel Webster College student who has logged more than 400 jumps and is preparing for the U.S. Parachute Association's National Collegiate Skydiving Competition. The 22-year-old is majoring in aviation management and part of a

 

 

This article brings up a very big question.  When the NCAA dropped the sport of ski jumping, I believe it was at the end of the 1980 season, why didn't the USSA start hosting a National Collegiate Ski Jumping Championships?

 

If the college ranks were so important to this sport why didn't the USSA step up to the call and start hosting a national championships for the college kids, and for the college age kids only?  Yes, I'm talking beyond the current National Championship that are hosted each year out west.  I'm talking about a championships for college students only.

 

I know of many sports, like skydiving, rock climbing, ice climbing, mountain biking, white water kayaking, etc, that don't have college participation that are managing to hold their own if not growing by leaps and bounds.  Take a look at whitewater kayaking sometime.  It has a very nice growth rate, and it doesn't have an NCAA Championships.  Why is it ski jumping wants to blame it's downfall on the NCAA?  You don't need NCAA to have a strong healthy sport, other sports prove that fact.

 

Oh and by the way, as I write this on Christmas '05 I notice by looking at www.uspa.org/news/events.htm that the USPA National Collegiate Skydiving Championships will be starting on December 27 down in Lake Wales, FL.

 

Again, how many fingers did you have pointing back at yourself.

 

Tomorrow I'll have more bad media publicity and start showing why it is so bad to dissuade people from jumping.

 

Until next time

Keep the ski tips up,

Crash