Skydiving club brings first-time jumpers to discounted event

In the back of the red Kodiak plane and more than 12,000 feet in the sky, the red light flashes, signalling the open door.

The world below is revealed. Someone scans the ground and checks the position of the tarmac. About 30 seconds pass, then a green light flashes. It’s time to jump.

That experience is something everyone should feel at least once, said 21-year-old Taylor Thelander, the president of the UF Falling Gators Skydiving Club and a UF public relations senior.

Once every semester, the skydiving club takes advantage of a discount on tandem skydiving with Skydive Palatka for UF and Santa Fe College students. From Friday to Sunday, students and faculty with a valid ID were able to check an activity off their bucket list for the discounted price of $140, said Nikki Soles, the Skydive Palatka manager.

The tandem skydiving special took place at Palatka-Kay Larkin Airport in Palatka, Florida, located at 4015 Reid St. Without the special, it normally costs $185. Skydive Palatka has been offering the discount to students for more than 10 years, said owner Art Shaffer.

The goal of the event is to promote skydiving to college students and attract more people to the sport and the club, Thelander said.

“Take those 20 seconds of courage … because there’s nothing else on Earth that can simulate seeing Earth from that perspective,” Thelander said. “With our rigorous, busy lives, it’s nice to take that step back and experience something you’ve never experienced before.”

The event brought out 21 participants who used the student discount, many of whom were with Falling Gators or friends of club members trying tandem skydiving for the first time. One of the first-timers was 21-year-old Ryan Walsh, who heard about the event from Thelander. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do at some point,” said Walsh, a UF management senior. “I felt like it would either be now or never.”

Walsh was the first of Thelander’s friends she convinced to try skydiving. On Saturday morning, the two jumped out of the plane together, strapped to instructors.

As Walsh fell through the sky, he said the experience was pure adrenaline.

“I recommend it to people even if it’s just once,” he said. “It’s something so different from anything else that I would say try it.”

Rather than making her first jump, Madison Cydis, a member of the skydiving club, took her 30th jump Friday. Cydis jumped solo instead of tandem. The UF biomedical engineering sophomore has been skydiving since May of this year.

“If you’ve ever been on a flight, it’s basically the same thing,” the 19-year-old said. “It’s more of a surreal thing because you’re actually going to jump out of this plane instead of looking out the window.”

Cydis said she was nervous when she first went skydiving, even when she was strapped to an instructor who had done more than 30,000 jumps. Once she left the plane and started falling, though, she said it was an “instant switch from fear to adrenaline.”  

“It’s normal to be scared, but that’s what makes it so incredible,” Cydis said. “Because you overcome something that you were initially scared to do. Once you land on the ground it’s this incredible feeling of knowing you got over a fear you once had.”

UF senior public relations student Taylor Thelander, 21, gives UF business management senior Ryan Walsh, 21, a high-five on his first tandem skydiving jump in the air above Kay Larkin Airport in Palatka, Florida. The two took part in a UF Falling Gators Skydiving Club event with Skydive Palatka on Saturday.