Celina man's skydiving team comes back to earth after gold medal jump

CELINA - Skydiving may be a once-in-a-lifetime, bucket-list item for some, but Celina resident Brian Nedderman, 48, has done it more than 2,000 times.

He and the rest of his eight-person team, the Shapeshifters, are the new national champions of intermediate eight-way formation skydiving. They earned gold in the U.S. Parachute Association National Skydiving Championship on Sept. 14-15 in Rochelle, Illinois, among 600 skydivers from across the country.

He has known his teammates for at least three years now. Six live in Ohio, while one lives in Indiana and another recently moved from Ohio to Pennsylvania, he said.

They trained together for only a couple of months leading up to competition but were able to perform their best when it mattered the most, he noted.

While 13,000 feet in the air, Nedderman and four teammates exited the plan and hung onto the outside before diving while three others initiated their dives from the inside of the plane. They then raced against clock to form six geometric formations within 50 seconds before opening their parachutes. Among the formations were a snowflake and a caterpillar, Nedderman said.

A videographer jumped with them to capture their formations and submitted the film to the judges for evaluation, he said.

Nedderman, who works at Crown Equipment Corp., made his first dive when he was 18 with his brother-in-law, thinking "anything he can do, so can I."

"I was scared not knowing what to expect," he recalled on Wednesday at his home. "It was a pure adrenaline rush."

Now when he jumps out of the plane, Nedderman said "I'm prepared for anything that would come up." So far, he hasn't had any perilous experiences while diving, but he has had to pull his reserve parachute for fear his main one wasn't working properly.

Everybody should go skydiving at least once, Nedderman said.

"It's on most people's bucket lists because they're afraid of the unknown," he added.

Looking out of the plane toward the ground can be scary, Nedderman admitted, adding he is afraid of heights.

"You would be surprised how many skydivers have a fear of heights," he said. "You're so high up in the air though, it's like looking at ants. Everything seems so small; it's not real anymore."

But once people have tried it, most want to go again, he said.

Free-falling gets the heart pumping, he said, comparing it to an aerobic exercise.

"You don't get that drop in your stomach feeling like you would expect," he added.

Skydiving has no age limit. He knows 80-year-olds who do it and has also signed up his four nieces and nephews to go, he said.