For most people, boarding an airplane is enough of a risk, but others find thrills jumping out of one.
There is a group of these self-proclaimed “adrenaline junkies” on this campus – they are members of the Ohio State Skydiving Club.
The club was established in the fall of 1996 and has grown to include about 100 students. The OSU club participates in routine meetings, on-campus demonstration jumps, fund-raisers, competitions and various club-sponsored trips.
The club has seen an increase in membership and numbers of demonstration jumps, as well as added club funding from OSU Recreational Sports. This past year, the club even saw three members compete at the collegiate nationals in Lake Wales, Fla.
The club is open to every student with or without skydiving experience, and has even successfully taken a woman confined to a wheelchair on a jump.
Carnes, the founder of the OSU Skydiving Club, said 100 new students are taken on their first jump every year. The club has a core membership of 12 licensed skydivers to assist the new members. The majority of members jump only once, but some have more than 1,000 jumps under their belt.
Every level of skydiver is welcome, and there is even a program for certification through the location where the club jumps, also known as the “drop zone.” The program is a course where anyone can become a licensed skydiver.
The first three or four times a student skydives, they do a jump known as a tandem – meaning the student is strapped to the belly of a licensed skydiver. The licensed skydiver essentially does all of the work by pulling the parachute, and allowing the student to experience the exhilaration of the fall without worry.
The student does receive about 30 minutes of ground training from the tandem instructor prior to the jump. Members of the skydiving club jokingly call this minimal training a sophisticated wait for a Disney ride.
This “Disney ride” lasts about two or three minutes from exiting the airplane door to landing on the ground. First-time jumpers start at an altitude of 13,000 feet, a distance measuring more than 2.5 miles.
Many people stray away from the thrill of skydiving because they are afraid of the risk involved. Skydiving is a sport based on personal risk taking, according to long-time member Thomas Kerler, an assistant professor of mathematics.
Personal risk-taking in extreme cases can result in death, but as Kerler explains, minor injuries stemming from improper landing are usually the common injuries in the sport. Statistically, skydiving is extremely safe, with a death occurring only once in every 130,000 jumps.
Club member Brian Smith, a professor of entomology, reassures skeptics.
“Skydiving is safer than riding a motorcycle because in skydiving, your neighbor ‘riding’ next to you is fully trained unlike when traveling on a highway,” Smith said.
Injury does still occur occasionally to even the most avid jumper. Carnes has broken an anklebone in her 900 jumps, while Kerler has fractured a wrist in his near 600 jumps. No first-time jumpers have ever been injured in the club’s history.
The popularity of skydiving has grown tremendously over the past 10 years. Kerler hopes the sport will some day be included in the Olympic Games.
Until then, the sport sponsors its own form of the Olympics called the World Games. They feature full-fledged competition, including skydivers attempting to hit land targets, as well as pairs jumping where two competitors are judged on the fancy air formations they demonstrate.
With skydiving steadily gaining popularity worldwide, many people raise basic questions about what it takes to break into the sport. Kerler and Carnes offer words of advice to those interested in getting started.
A first-time jumper can expect to pay between $150-200 for a tandem jump. Carnes still advises first-time jumpers to do a tandem, though, because jumping with an experienced person allows one to fully enjoy the experience.
At OSU, Kerler and Smith are doing their share to promote skydiving by sponsoring a skydiving education course this quarter. This course, with 25 students, will engage in four instructional lectures, followed by a skydiving trip to AerOhio near Wooster. On this trip, students will be taking their first skydiving jump together.
According to Smith, OSU is the first university to offer skydiving as a course for credit. The instructors have been contacted from schools nationwide about how to set up classes of their own.
