Everything you need to know about MTU’s newly created Skydiving Club
Why would you jump out of an operational plane? According to Charlie Joyce, president of the Skydiving Club, it’s because “the door was open,” and “it is the most euphoric, yet terrifying, experience of your life.”
From their first time jumping, the members of the E-board became hooked on skydiving. Matthew Coneher, the secretary for the Skydiving Club, talked about “[His] first solo [jump]… I had to crawl out onto… the strut of the wing and [hang]… I was hanging from that wing, it was awesome.” While at first the jump seemed terrifying for them, the scariest part is the drive there;once you’re in the air, there is no going back. According to Joyce, you fall through the air “being that high up and just alone… and the feeling of this emptiness around you beside the sky and tiny people on the ground there’s something about it that’s just untouched beauty.”
While skydiving might seem dangerous in reality, Joyce mentions, “we have had so much advancement in… skydiving that driving to the drop zone is the most dangerous part of your entire skydiving trip.” Confirming this claim, both Joyce and Kerry McCauley, the owner of Skydiving Twin Cities, mentioned that the parachute has a device called an automatic activation device, or AAD, in it that it will deploy a reserve parachute in case of emergency: “Even [with] no input… I will still reach the ground safely.” This, along with the “40 different safety mechanisms on that parachute alone” Joyce could point out, makes it far safer than one would expect. Joyce mentioned, “There is no safer thing you can do that feels more risky.”
The club was initially started by Joyce because while in school “the skydiving season wasn’t over, but it was for me.” Robert McCroske, a member of the club’s E-board, stated “[it’s about] getting people out skydiving for their first time,… [to] fix whatever reasons [that] they couldn’t go.” The students did seem to respond to this, with over 50 students signing up for the club and 16 for the first jump. This large engagement is why the club received a fairly large initial budget of 2,500 dollars of the 5,000 dollars they requested. Conner Skalitzky, the treasurer of the Undergraduate Student Government, believes “Skydiving for a lot of people is a one and done thing, check it off the bucket list, and you don’t necessarily care to go back and do it again. That might not be the case, but it might be.” USG wants to fund clubs that get continual engagement and benefit the university; depending on how many repeat jumpers the club generates, their budget could be increased, making it even cheaper for future students to try.
While originally the Skydiving Club was going to jump Saturday, Sep. 26 at Skydive Twin Cities WI, the event was postponed until Oct. 10. This delay was due to high winds of 20 mph. While professionals can skydive in winds up to 30 mph, amateurs need winds below 18 mph to jump, as stated by McCauley. For more information, you can check the MTU Skydiving Club Discord server, which is linked on their Involvement Link.
