FORT BRAGG, North Carolina –
Nearly a decade ago, on a clear morning, Mike Connors stepped toward the plane’s hatch and took a deep breath.
The Soldier looked at the canvas of fall colors on the ground below as a gush of wind swept into his face. He felt the weightlessness as his body dropped into the abyss.
His years as an Army Airborne paratrooper had taken away his fear of leaping from an aircraft.
But competitive skydiving posed a far different challenge.
He leaped at 12,500 feet, nearly 10 times the height of his jumps at the U.S. Army Airborne School. And instead of falling with fellow Soldiers anchored by a static line, he jumped solo.
After completing 25 instructor-led free fall jumps and classroom training, skydivers become eligible to perform skydives without an instructor and assume responsibility for their own safety.
“There’s nothing like the freedom of going into free fall,” said Connors, now an Army sergeant first class. “You're so far from the ground that your mind can't fully comprehend what that distance is.”
“To me, it looks just like a beautiful painting. … You have a fantastic view of the world.”
Connors didn’t know then, but he had taken his first steps toward elite competitive skydiving.
He now wears the red, white and blue uniform bearing the logo of Team USA during Golden Knights practices.
As a member of the U.S. Army Parachute Team, Connors performs competitively on its 4-way formation skydiving squad. The squad of Soldiers recently made history, winning the 2025 U.S. Parachute Association National Skydiving Championships last fall, earning the right to represent the U.S. in October at the 2026 World Skydiving Championships in Eloy, Arizona.
“I love being able to put on my uniform every day and be able to train to represent the U.S. military on the highest level in skydiving,” Connors said. “And to be able to show the American public, and the world, what U.S. Soldiers are capable of.”
But first, Connors and the Golden Knights have their sights set on the World Military Skydiving Championship 2026 in Lucenec, Slovakia, Aug. 14-23, hosted by the Conseil International du Sport Militaire. There, they will compete with the best military skydiving teams across the globe.
Connors and the American team finished with silver at the 46th World Military Skydiving Championship in Szolnok, Hungary, in July 2024.
The Golden Knights 4-way performance team finished four points behind eventual champion Belgium. Connors and his teammates hope to avenge their 2024 second place finish with a CISM championship.
“It’s still unfinished business for us,” he said.
Budget limitations prevented the Golden Knights from competing in the 2025 CISM championship, where Belgium repeated as champions. However, the Knights recently defeated the Belgian team in both indoor and outdoor competition.
Path to Knighthood
Connors began skydiving as a hobby; a break from the pressures of duty as an Army paratrooper. A fellow Soldier told him about a local training facility that offered both outdoor skydive training and an indoor skydiving wind tunnel.
He didn’t realize then that his skydiving venture would cross paths with his Army career.
Connors was a member of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the nation’s largest military installation that sits on a sprawling 251 square miles of Carolina coastland. As a senior noncommissioned officer serving full time as a paratrooper, he had heavy training requirements, including weapons qualifications, field training and physical fitness exercises. He deployed to Afghanistan twice in 2014 and 2016.
One afternoon in the fall of 2015, as he stood at the drop zone in Raeford, North Carolina, Connors saw skydivers in black suits landing several hundred feet away. Learning the jumpers were also Soldiers piqued his interest.
Connors grew up competing in wrestling and cross country in Mather, California, a suburb of Sacramento. He understood leverage and angles from his days as a featherweight wrestler.
To be a competitive skydiver, he had to learn a new set of skills, including how to use the wind to manipulate the body during freefall and how to manage a canopy.
Connors worked toward earning his A and B skydiving licenses, which require 25 and 50 jumps, respectively. However, to qualify for Golden Knights tryouts, he needed more than 100 jumps under his belt.
He met fellow Soldier and skydiver Sgt. 1st Class Mitch Stockenberg in a professional development course.
Stockenberg grew up playing football in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and dreamed of flying planes for the military. He earned his student pilot’s license at 16, flying Cessnas to prepare for his application to an Army ROTC program.
Then, during his senior year of high school, he noticed some blurriness in his eyesight and realized he could no longer meet the vision requirements.
Stockenberg enlisted to train as a Special Forces candidate. The Soldier completed his training, but unfortunate circumstances ended with a reassignment to the 82nd.
A few weeks later, Stockenberg proposed to his girlfriend, Amy. while on a tandem jump. The Soldier became hooked on the sport. After moving into a house in Raeford, then discovered the local drop zone where we both enrolled to become licensed skydivers. After Stockenberg learned about the Golden Knights while watching a member of the team land near his house, he committed to trying out.
Connors and Stockenberg grew close while attending the Army Advanced Leader Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. Both Soldiers brought their skydiving gear to Benning and wanted to continue their quest to meet the 100-jump qualifying standard.
After ALC courses each day, they would travel to the nearest skydiving drop zone and jump as often as they could. One day they jumped 13 times; the most by either jumper in a day. From sunrise to sunset, they continuously ascended more than 10,000 feet.
“We've been pretty inseparable,” Stockenberg said. “We've followed each other around the rest of our careers since that moment.”
Both Soldiers enrolled in the Golden Knights’ assessment and selection in the fall of 2018.
Each day, the candidates woke early, exercised and then went to the drop zone for a full day of jumps. During the program, the Soldiers endure an eight- to 10-week evaluation, where they learn body control and how to follow the narration for a demonstration performance.
“It’s like Groundhog Day,” Connors said. “It can be quite a lot of stress because you're trying to perform at your absolute best while going through the physical rigors that come with conducting 10 to 12 jumps every single day … as well as trying to keep mentally aware and at a high enough level to be able to recite the narration.”
Stockenberg made the cut to join the Golden Knights. Instead of flying aircraft for the Army, he would be jumping out of them, at dizzying heights.
Connors lasted until the final days of tryouts but did not make the team. Although the news devastated him, the team assigned him as their drop zone safety officer. He organized safety protocols so team members landed safely, while also getting mentored by team members.
Connors spent a year taking more skydives and training before finally making the team the following fall. In a ceremony that mimics the traditional knighting ceremonies in European monarchies, Connors took a knee and recited a creed. Then, a senior team member placed a blade upon both of his shoulders, officially dubbing him a Golden Knight.
“He's not the biggest guy, but he's a very tenacious athlete and individual,” Stockenberg said of Connors. “I never got to serve in the regular Army with him, but he’s a dude I’d want to follow into battle for sure.”
The Knight Life
Skydiving evolved from a hobby to a way of life for Connors and Stockenberg. For a year, the duo toured together as members of the Golden Knights’ demonstration team. They spent most days on the road performing for thousands at air shows, football games and festivals.
The Soldiers had to be more than elite skydivers; they learned to interact with local communities and become Army ambassadors, sharing their own accounts of military service to bring new recruits into the Army.
Then, in 2020, the pair sought a new challenge. Connors still possessed a competitive drive from his days on the wrestling mat. Stockenberg, a former high school quarterback, missed athletic battles. They applied to be members of the Army’s prestigious competition team, first joining the Golden Knights’ 8-way team.
The Soldiers had to maintain top physical fitness and core strength. Their bodies had to withstand the rigors of skydiving several times a day. Competitors adopt the “mantis” position when airborne, an advanced belly fly in which they keep their bodies in a consistent arched position and bring their legs and knees closer together while keeping their limbs spread.
“We use our arms and legs as flight controls,” Connors said. “And we keep our core tight, and we're manipulating our body like an airfoil to control where we go in the sky.”
After leaving the plane as a team, the Soldiers have 35 seconds to perform sophisticated, technical formations before they have 10 to 15 more seconds to pull parachutes and land safely on the ground. Each Soldier must spin and turn in cadence with the other team members.
During competitions, Skydivers are scored on how many complete formations they can achieve during a 5-6 point dive flows randomly drawn from a pool of 36 formations. A full competition consists of 10 individual rounds with almost unlimited combinations.
To practice performances on the ground, the Knights prepare on wooden carts called “creepers,” which allow them to sync their cadences and grasp teammates’ limbs to create different formations. The Soldiers also use a wind tunnel for indoor skydives during colder months.
Additionally, they must remain physically fit while maintaining a specific weight to effectively freefall with teammates.
Both Connors and Stockenberg fight their own struggles with skydives. Connors battles anxiety between competition rounds. Stockenberg, ironically, fears heights while walking on a ledge. But they learned to compartmentalize their fears.
The team’s runner-up finish to Hungary at CISM 2024 drained the team emotionally and physically. Connors said he had to step away to reassess his mental approach to the sport.
He spent time with Golden Knights competition leader Master Sgt. Jesse Stahler, an experienced jumper himself with several national championships under his belt, and more than 15 years of competitive skydiving experience.
Connors had to remember why he began skydiving more than 10 years ago. He said he simply tries to have fun and enjoy the long descent to the earth. The Golden Knights rebounded to win the 8-way competitive team world championship in 2024.
“I spent many competitions just being scared the entire time of the performance,” Connors said. “It wasn't until the [2024] world championship that I started to have fun in a competition. That was a big turning point for me … being able to smile and enjoy a jump in the middle of a competition.”
That shift in mindset helped the Soldiers’ competition team reach a milestone the Golden Knights had not achieved in two decades: winning both the outdoor national championship last year and the 2026 Indoor National Championship in February.
“I would have to say everybody's hungry to be better and to be a champion and to believe that we are champions,” Stockenberg said. “That's something that each individual on the team must have. You can't train it. You can't coach it. It's just got to be inside of them … part of their DNA.”