About a
year and half ago, I wrote a blog post on
pairs
and teams in the UK, and I felt it was time for
an update, given that some new blood is emerging into the sport. And I'm going
to do this overview from a perspective of 'tiers':
fun,
event, or
competition. Pairs or teams in
the
fun tier essentially get together on a Saturday
or Sunday (or whatever day of the week) and fly together, purely for fun. They
may or may not have a specific routine choreographed to music, and there is no
interest in flying public demos. Next is the
event
tier: pair or team has at least one routine, and performs at kite
festivals, village fairs, or other public events. And then we have the
competition tier, be it
national or international. Guess this speaks for itself: pair or team competes
at the UK nationals, EuroCup or WSKC. Compare these tiers to different
divisions in other sports, with the big difference that there is no promotion
or relegation from one tier to another. Essentially, pairs or teams 'promote'
or 'relegate' themselves (e.g. by deciding to start flying at kite festivals,
or retiring from competition), depending on their ambitions and ability. The
only exception is that in order to compete internationally, a pair or team has
to be nominated by
STACK.
OK, let's
start with Dual-line teams
First we
have the reigning World Champions, the
Scratch Bunnies, who
retained
their world title earlier this year.
Following this, they retired from competition, and I don't know whether they'll
still fly together as a team at events or just for fun. Next there is
Flame, the
current
UK champions. Obviously a team in the
competition tier, and they have
also competed internationally (they came 10th at the last world championships).
Another team that used to be in the (international) competition tier is
Airheads (shown
in the photo). They have retired from competition this year, but are still very
much flying in the
event tier.
And they haven't ruled out coming back to competition in the future.
Sky Symphony has,
as far as I'm aware, never flown competition, and have no plans of doing so. So
a team firmly in the
event
tier.
Pallas
Family Flyers also has not flown competition
so far, but they haven't ruled out doing so in the future. Until that happens,
they're in the
event tier.
The Flying Squad is mostly known as a quad-line team (see below), but
they occasionally fly dual-line routines, which warrants them being included in
this section. Not flying competition, so another team in the
event tier. And then there is
L-katz, the team we're part of. L-katz has flown at a few kite festivals last
year, but, for various reasons, decided not to do so this year. They may fly
again at festivals in coming years, but for now they're a team in the
fun tier.
Here's a
table summarising the seven UK dual-line teams and their current tier (C =
Competition; E = Event; F = Fun):
|
Scratch Bunnies
|
?
|
|
Flame
|
C
|
|
Airheads
|
E
|
|
Sky Symphony
|
E
|
|
Pallas Family Flyers
|
E
|
|
The Flying Squad
|
E
|
|
L-katz
|
F
|
OK, on to Quad-line teams
First of
all, there is
The Flying
Squad, already mentioned above. They've flown
competition in the distant past, but are now very much a team flying at festival
and events, so firmly in the
event
tier. Also in the
event
tier, and also having flown competition in the distant past are
The Decorators.
Then we have
Fusion (shown in the photo), which, to my knowledge, has
never flown competition, so again, very much a team in the
event tier. The
Haven Flyers are, again, not a team that has ever flown competition for all
I know, but flies at festivals and events, so yet again, a team in the
event tier. And finally, the Free Jays, which, to my knowledge, also only flies at events. Which gives us the
following simple table; note that there is not a single quad-line team flying
competition in the UK at the moment?
|
The
Flying Squad
|
E
|
|
The
Decorators
|
E
|
|
Fusion
|
E
|
|
Free
Jays
|
E
|
|
Haven
Flyers
|
E
|
From teams we go to pairs, and I'll
first look at Dual-line pairs.
Unlike
the teams, which can often vary in exactly who is flying, I will now mention
names, as pair compositions are pretty much fixed. Phoenix, part of
Flame, consists of Fran Burstall and Tony Shiggins. They
are the
current
UK champions, so clearly in the
competition tier. Ex-Grads
consists of
Keith Griffiths and
Vee Griffiths. They have flown competition in the past (up to UK
national champions), but have retired from competition, and are now flying at
festivals and events, so in the
event
tier. To be more precise, Ex-Grads is part of the
Airheads, and
since retiring from competition have abandoned the name Ex-Grads, and are
flying under the name Airheads at festivals.
Close Encounters (shown in the photo), consisting of Allan and Marilyn
Pothecary, have flown competition in the past (making it up to Experienced
Class champions), but are now firmly in the
event
tier.
Team Spectrum, made up of Bryan and Carl Wright, have never flown
competition and have no intention of doing so. Another pair in the
event tier. Dave and Angela
Green don't have an official name for festivals, though they sometimes refer to
themselves as "The Greenies". They've flown at at least one kite
festival, so another
event
tier pair.
Four Bi'
Two is a new pair, consisting of
Josh Mitcheson and
Graham Lockwood. As far as I'm aware, they're flying at a festival in the
Netherlands as this blog post gets published, so most definitely an
event tier pair. Competition flying will be a bit
more difficult for them, as both are flying two kites, and 'multi-kite pair
flying' doesn't really fit in the existing competition categories. The Weekend
Pilots is a pair within the Brighton Kite Flyers; as far as I'm aware they
don't have a routine for festivals, so I'll regard them as a
fun tier pair for now. Wings on Strings is our
sister pair within L-katz, and consists of Roger Backhouse and Tony Vella.
They've flown at two festivals last year, but have decided not to fly at
festivals any more for the foreseeable future, so another
fun tier pair. And then last, but hopefully not
least,
Flying Fish, made up of
yours truly and
Irma Adriaanse, and also part of the L-katz team. And, as you may know,
we recently took the plunge and became a
competition
tier pair. Here's the helpful (?)
summarising table again, with the tiers of the nine active UK dual-line pairs:
|
Phoenix
|
C
|
|
Flying Fish
|
C
|
|
Ex-Grads
|
E
|
|
Close Encounters
|
E
|
|
Team Spectrum
|
E
|
|
The Greenies
|
E
|
|
Four Bi’ Two
|
E
|
|
Weekend Pilots
|
F
|
|
Wings on Strings
|
F
|
Which
brings us finally to Quad-line pairs.
Smallest
of the four categories. First of all,
The Flying Squad. They have flown competition in the past (up to becoming
European champions), and are now flying in the
event tier. And then we have a
new quad-line pair: Quadrilateral (shown in the picture), consisting of
Mark Brackenridge and
Teresa Brackenridge. A
fun
tier pair at the moment,
until they get a routine under their belt. I hope to see them move up to
festivals, and possibly even competition (nudge, nudge). For completeness, a
table!
|
The Flying Squad
|
E
|
|
Quadrilateral
|
F
|
The above
gives you all the pairs and teams active in the UK. Clearly, I know of all
current pairs and teams in the competition
tier, and sadly, there are only three of them .... I probably didn't miss
many (if any) in the event
tier. As to the fun tier,
it's difficult to tell how many pairs and teams are flying in the UK outside of
festivals and other organised events, because by their nature, you're unlikely
to hear about them unless you see them flying or happen to know one of the
members. So there may well be more that I'm not aware of.
Three
teams (all quad-line) were mentioned in my
previous
overview, but I've not heard anything from them,
and in one case the web-site appears to be dead. So, unless I hear anything to
the contrary, I'll assume that Flying Colours, Team4Mation and Snuff are no
longer active.
If anyone
reading this notices any errors or omissions, please let me know and I'll
correct/update; thanks!
Credit for the picture of Quadrilateral: Ian Forsey
First
of all, we had decided to fly two routines in our slots this weekend: our
normal routine flown to Kayak's "Ruthless Queen" and a second
routine, flown to "Adiemus". This second routine has a choreographed
start and finish, but in-between it's mostly 'make it up as we go along', with
me calling out the various patterns and moves as I see fit. It turned out that
we really needed that second routine, as the PA system couldn't read our CD
with "Ruthless Queen", couldn't read the back-up CD with
"Ruthless Queen", and couldn't deal with a memory stick .... So we
were down to just flying the "Adiemus" routine on Saturday, using our T5 Cubans, which only went so-so (the wind had dropped to almost
nothing, but at least the PA system could read that CD!). As we were staying in
a B&B in Dunstable, we had no opportunity to burn another CD, but Carl
(of Team Spectrum) did go home for the evening and was kind enough to burn a
new CD for us with "Ruthless Queen". Carl, thanks a lot, you saved
our butts for Sunday, and we could fly both routines in our slots (flying T5 Cubans in the first slot, T5 SULs in the second one). Pretty happy with how the routines went
(no major errors in any) and we're now officially a two-routine pair!
