Sports Editor
Peter Hockaday
peterhockaday@dailyemerald.com
Tuesday, October 22,2002
Oregon Daily Emerald
Sports
Best bet
MLB: World Series Game 3
Anaheim at San Francisco
5 p.m., FOX
Jeremy Forrest Emerald
Former club sports sky diving coach Lewie Pettit, seen here coming in for a landing, founded the program four years ago.
The sky’s
the limit
The Club Sports sky diving
team is a fledgling unit that is
just trying to get off the
ground afteryears of trying
Scott Archer
Freelance Sports Reporter
Jumping out of an airplane is
crazy. Jumping out of a plane
15,000 feet in the _
air is crazier.
Training, prepar
ing and compet
ing in sky diving is
the craziest. Un
less you’re Lisa
Delambert.
Delambert is
the coach of the
Oregon sky diving club. But to have
a club, you need to have members
— and this team is looking for
them. Currently, only one Oregon
student is a member of the club.
That person is also the coach.
One reason for the low participa
tion is because the club has been
around only four years.
Former coach Lewie Pettit, also
the founder of the club, under
stands the difficulty of organizing
and overseeing a sky diving club.
“I was stressed every year to
keep the club going,” Pettit said. “A
lot of people think about jumping
or joining the club, but they don’t
take that first step.”
That first step
is a huge step.
But once that
step is made, a
lot of students
get hooked.
“Everyone
seeks some
thing different
to learn,” Pettit
said. “We teach them to fly. We liter
ally fly, that is the goal.” *
Learning to fly, however, takes
more than just your basic Duck
wings.
“The problem with the club is
that you need 20 to 30 jumps to qual
Turn to Dive, page 10
Club
Sports
Tuesday
Falling from the open sky like any regular sports guy
So, first of all, take a long, hard look at my
mug down there.
Does it look like the mug of an extreme
sports guru? Do I look
like a BMX-biking, cliff
diving adventure freak?
Heck no.
I’m a sports guy, not
an extreme-sports guy.
I like my baseball pack
aged on satellite televi
sion. I like my hockey
from the La-Z-Boy —
with the leg rest kicked
up, please.
And yet I, like many
people, have that list.
That list of things you
want to do, things that
break the couch-surfing
monotony. At the top of that list was sky diving.
So when Dave Wright — one of the “Bros.”
of Wright Bros. Skydiving, which is one of two
sky diving companies that operate out of the
Peter
Hockaday
Two minutes for
crosschecking
Creswell Airport — offered me the chance to
fall from an airplane at 15,000 feet, I grabbed
it like I normally grab the remote.
I wanted to fly. And on Sunday, I did.
When you sky dive, the instructors make
you keep a log book of each jump, so I thought I
would instead keep a log of one jump — my
first.
Here is that running diary.
10:20 a.m. — I arrive at the hangar and
begin making preparations to jump. We
learn about rip chords and altimeters and
chutes and every other thing you could pos
sibly need to know about sky diving. The in
structor tells us about jumping out of the
plane, saying it’s important not to grab on
to the walls of the small exit when it’s your
turn to jump — grab your chest straps in
stead.
Hey, I figure, there is no way I’m going to
be grabbing onto those walls. I’ve got it un
der control. I’m no wall-grabber. Riiiiight.
II a.m. — I meet Lewie, the founder of
Oregon’s club sky diving team and also my
tandem partner for the day. Lewie is a big,
jovial man and looks like he’s been on
maybe one too many sky dives. Later, he
will be the only person to dive without a
jumpsuit when the instructors go up by
themselves. He dives in jeans.
But Lewie is great, obviously loves sky
diving and has a reassuring personality. I
learn he’s running for Greswell mayor — on
a sky diving platform. I’m not even kidding.
Please, if you live in Greswell, elect this
man mayor. You will not be disappointed.
11:26a.m. — I finally get around to sign
ing the release form. Some of the sentences
give pause. Words like “risk of personal in
jury” and such abound.
Of course, I initial everywhere, literally
signing my life away on the dotted line.
11:45 a.m. — I start to realize that they
shouldn’t call it “sky diving,” they should
call it “sky watching.” Every person in the
hangar, and there are a lot of people in
volved with the sky diving process, keeps
walking outside, checking the sky, then
walking back in, usually muttering things
like, “Damn clouds never gonna break up,”
or “10,000 feet at the most,” or other such
sky diving talk. Very entertaining.
2 p.m. — We’re watching a group of
divers from the other sky diving outfit take
their jumps when we see a parachute float
ing in mid-air with no diver attached. This
means someone’s initial chute didn’t work
and they were forced to land with their re
serve chute.
Great. Now I start thinking about what
happens if my chute doesn’t work. And then
what happens when my backup doesn’t
work. This is not very entertaining — this
is very worrying. I want my mommy.
4:30 p.m. — Just kidding about my mom
my. After hours of waiting for the clouds to
break up, a huge patch of blue sky is headed
our way, and we mobilize to jump. Lewie
starts to play therapist, telling me to relax.
Sure, I’ll relax. I’ll relax when I’m sleeping in
Turn to Hockaday, page 10
Conference teams appear in
season’s first BCS standings
Washington State is the highest
ranked Rac-10 team in the
recently-released BCS poll
Pac-l 0 Notes
Peter Hockaday
Sports Editor
With the release of the year’s first
Bowl Championship Series rankings
Monday, the Pacific-10 Conference
powers avoided any controversy that
usually surrounds the controversial
poll.
Nope, the Pac-10 is sitting BCS
pretty.
Washington State was the top
ranked Pac-10 team, coming in sev
enth in the first poll. Southern Cali
fornia was 14th, while Oregon was
15th after its first loss of the season
Saturday.
The Cougars caught the biggest
break of any Pac-10 squad. WSU,
ranked ninth in The Associated
Press poll and 11th in the USA To
day/ESPN coaches’ poll, had the
highest strength of schedule of any
one-loss team, which propelled it
into the seventh spot in the BCS.
USC was also helped by a strong
schedule, a schedule that allowed
the Trojans to break into the BCS
despite having two losses. USC had
the fourth-hardest schedule in the
country. The only other two-loss
BGS team, Florida State, had the
third-highest strength-of-schedule
ranking in the country.
Oregon was hurt by its poor
strength of schedule. At No. 63, the
Ducks had the second-easiest sched
ule of any BGS squad. Only unde
feated North Carolina State, ranked
No. 11, had an easier schedule.
The biggest BGS controversy sur
rounded Miami and Oklahoma.
Ranked second in both major polls,
the Sooners 13-ranked schedule
propelled them into the top BGS
spot. Miami, with the nation’s 27th
Turn to Pac-10, page 10
Courtesy Washington State Media Services
jason Gesser has led Washington State to seventh in the BCS standings.