Hanford pupils were avidly watching the only children’s team in this year’s national Indoor Skydiving Championships last week, as their friend and classmate Rachel in Year 7, was a member of the four-strong team.
Rachel has been Indoor Skydiving for over a year at the iFly centre in Basingstoke and for the past two months has training every Wednesday evening at iFLY. The children’s team, Mini Jets, are lucky enough to be trained by NFTO, an all-female formation skydive team and the current world champions in both the Open and Female Category. Rachel is pictured below on the far right.
Rachel’s next goal is to learn to skydive upside down and, in time and much to her parents’ disquiet, she wants to Skydive out of a plane. According to Rachel, “Indoor skydiving is a great feeling, and doing it as part of a team in the nationals has been amazing.”
Rachel’s father, Matthew, says, “I doubt the founders of Hanford had indoor skydiving in mind all those years ago. However, there is something very ‘Hanford’ about Rachel doing this mad sport whereby she learns how to fly and be part of a successful team along the way.”
The Mini Jets performed brilliantly at the Nationals and have made it through to the International Championships which will be held in Slovakia in April 2023.
Categories: Hanford School School News
