Bruin and brother fall into skydiving, land championship wins

He walks over to the opening in the plane. With the roar of the engine and the sound of the wind blowing, he can barely hear. He and his brother get into position at the hatch. They get the go ahead and take the dive from 14,000 feet in the air.

Having performed more than 460 jumps, animation graduate student and competitive skydiver Andre Gerner said that he thinks skydiving is the most freeing thing anyone can do, and it is even better when you can share it with someone.

Gerner competes in collegiate skydiving with his brother, Cadet 2nd Class Joseph Gerner, who currently attends the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado. They compete under the team name EagleBear. The Eagle comes from the mascot of Joseph Gerner’s former school, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and the Bear comes from Andre Gerner’s school, UCLA. They compete in the two-way sit-fly category which is a two-man team dive where they are falling in sitting-like formation.

EagleBear formed when the two of them were finishing up their class A parachuting license. At the time, Joseph Gerner wanted to boost his resume for when he applied to flight school and felt that having his parachuting license would be that extra something that would help him. He didn’t want to do it alone, however, and asked Andre Gerner if that was something he wanted to do with him. At one of their last jumps for the license, they watched the 2010 National Collegiate Parachuting Championships in Eloy, Ariz. After that, they were so impressed that they said they decided to form their own team.

This past December they competed in the 2014 National Collegiate Parachuting Championships in Eloy, and for the second year in a row they took first place, beating out three Air Force Academy teams.

Of the 75 medals awarded for the various categories at the competition, 57 went to military academies. Gerner, representing UCLA, was the only civilian to win a gold medal at this competition.

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The night before an event, a judge randomly draws a set of maneuvers called dive pools. The competitors are then to perform as many of the maneuvers in the round as they can before they have to pull their parachutes. So as soon as Andre Gerner and his brother find out the set of maneuvers for the competition, they head back to their room and start planning for the next day.

Gerner said that he and his brother will bring out action figures to visualize what is the most efficient way to go about performing each maneuver. With each one correctly performed they earn a point, and the team with the most points wins the competition.

“You sort of memorize your cues like you have memorized lines in a play,” Gerner said.

The next morning, as they wait to go up into the plane, they go through a process that they call dirt diving, which is when the two of them are on the ground going through the motions of their 35-second dive. Once the two brothers are in the plane, the only thing they can do is to start visualizing all the steps in their mind.

Then they jump.

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Even though they are brothers, Andre and Joseph Gerner’s parents said the two have very opposite personalities.

“(Joseph Gerner) is the very short-haired, stark military man that wants to become a test pilot, and Andre is my long-haired hippie from California who is an animation major and is very inclined in the arts,” said Andre Gerner Sr., their father. “So really two very different personalities, but they complement each other very well.”

Andre Gerner said that the differences between him and his brother have helped when they are competing. He said that his brother, being an aeronautical engineering student, approaches skydiving from a strictly physics focus. Meanwhile, Andre Gerner, being an animation student, said his strengths are being able to visualize and explain the movements.

“(Skydiving) is dramatically improved by your ability to visualize objects and have spatial awareness,” Gerner said. “Also being able to understand how the forces act on the body helps significantly.”

In addition, Andre Gerner said their closeness as brothers is another edge they have. Andre and Joseph Gerner were born into a military family. Their father was an active duty officer in the Air Force while they were growing up, and because of it, the family had to move every couple of years. Gerner said it’s because of the constant moving that he and his brother got very close.

“One thing that happens when you are doing these types of routines with someone, you can’t talk to them,” Joseph Gerner said. “You really try instead to read their eyes and facial expressions.”

They know each other so well that they are able to predict and get in the mind of what the other is thinking, Gerner said.

“When you are able to think on the other person’s terms you get to make some artistic flying,” Gerner said.

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Every break they get as a family now, they spend it skydiving, Gerner Sr. said.

“This is one thing that keeps the whole family together,” Gerner Sr. said.

Three-day weekends, Thanksgiving, spring break – any free time the two have, Andre Gerner will fly to Colorado to meet up with his brother to practice, getting up to 10 jumps a day.

Team EagleBear has at most one year left in collegiate skydiving, as Joseph Gerner will graduate from the Air Force Academy in 2016.

“After this year (Joseph) becomes an Air Force officer and will hopefully go off to pilot training, so we might not be able to get together as family like we usually do,” Gerner Sr. said. “We will still do skydiving as a sport, but maybe serious competition will have to be on hold.”

It is the brothers’ hope that they will be able to continue competing after college in the U.S. National Parachuting competitions, but a lot of that is dependent on Joseph Gerner.

Andre Gerner said he knows that there might not be that much more competing and as much as he doesn’t want it to end, he is thankful for all the memories he has gained in sharing it with his brother.

“The wind is everywhere, bigger, invisible and more powerful than you, and you have to treat the wind the way you treat life. The wind is huge, so why try to resist it,” Gerner said.