Efforts Were Two Months In The Making

When Jessica Kettlewood was jumping in a friendly speedstar competition in May 2024, she realized that most of the people on the winning team were female and began to wonder about the existing Pennsylvania state skydiving records for women.

She knew there were a number of other skilled women in the area and after doing some research, she found that it would be fairly easy to break the record for the single point large formation. She also thought it would be possible to establish two more records for sequential jumps.

So Kettlewood set about organizing a group to do just that. After two months of group texts on a weekend with great weather in late July, 12 women got together for the first time for a record-setting weekend at Skydive Philadelphia at the Pennridge Airport (KCKZ) in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. They were ready to learn and have some fun while attempting to set the records.

The head coach of the team was Sheryl Adams-Benner, assisted by Elizabeth Porter. After a short meet and greet and safety briefing they were up in the air to go after the large formation record – a 12-way with a 6-way star base and 6 jumpers doing leg grips in between Which they did on the very first jump!

The group struggled to get through different iterations of the sequential jump, and ended up going into the next day. But on the sixth jump they were able to get through the sequential large formation and the full-break sequential large formation jumps for the records.

So it turned out to be a great weekend for Kettlewood and the other women and apparently Skydive Philadelphia is now stoked to go after more Pennsylvania records in the future.

FMI:  www.uspa.org/ , www.skydivephiladelphia.com/