Jaclyn Kaylor’s fascination with skydiving began during her student-athlete days playing softball for Georgia Southern.

Every year during Spring Break, Kaylor and her teammates would travel to play Stetson, and during pregame warm-ups she would notice planes taking off from the DeLand (Florida) Municipal Airport, followed by skydivers floating to earth.

Kaylor, now the director of athletics at Georgia Southwestern, has turned her interest in skydiving into a pursuit that led to her becoming part of a world-record group jump September 26 in Perris, California.

Kaylor was part of a 181-woman formation that raised more than $915,000 to help fight breast cancer. This was the fourth “Jump For The Cause,” and it also marked a personal milestone for Kaylor, since the record-breaking jump was the 700th of her life.

Women from 31 countries were invited to break the previous world record of 151 female jumpers. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale verified that the attempt was a record.

“I didn’t tell anyone it was my 700th jump, except for my boyfriend,” Kaylor said. “I’m superstitious and didn’t want to jinx anything. But it was very sweet for me. I’m still very young in the sport.”

She said there were women in the circular-like formation who had anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 jumps.

“There was even a lady from Virginia that had 16,000,” said Kaylor, who took her first leap from  an airplane in 2003. “Some of these people have been jumping for 20 or 30 years.”

Kaylor waited to start skydiving after graduating from Georgia Southern in 2000 and earning a postgraduate degree in athletic training from Kentucky. Once she took her first jump, she was hooked.

“I’ve been averaging 150 to 200 jumps per year since 2005,” Kaylor said. “I try to go at least one weekend a month.”

She said jumping involves more athleticism than a non-skydiver would think.

For the record jump, the group had to take several practice runs and conduct walkthroughs on the ground.

“I jumped from the ‘G’ plane, which is the second plane back from the lead plane,” Kaylor said. “They fly in a ‘V’ formation. Everyone has an assigned slot in the airplane and an assigned slot in the formation.”

The practice jumps were done mostly at 16,500 feet, with the latter ones conducted at 18,000 feet. The group broke formation around 7,500 feet so everyone could land safely. Kaylor and her group had around 10,000 feet to complete the formation, while falling at 120 miles per hour.

“That’s where the skill of flying comes in,” Kaylor said. “If you don’t know how to maneuver yourself and control your body to fly to your slot, there is no way you could make it.”

She then offered some good sports analogies as to the difficulty of obtaining the world record.

“It is like trying to get all the NASCAR drivers to drive side by side at 120 miles per hour then reach out of their windows and hold hands,” Kaylor said. “It is hard to explain to someone who has never been skydiving before. Doing a formation like this is like taking 180 golfers to a par-3 and asking every single one of them to hit the green on one try at the same time.”

There were three officials from FAI to authenticate the record.

“They would take the video into a separate room, and they zoomed in to see every grip between every person,” Kaylor said. “Everybody has to be in their correct spot holding on to the correct person. They scrutinize the video one person at a time.”

For the jump, Kaylor wore a blue suit adorned with 32 pink patches representing the people who made donations.

“I’ve been fortunate that breast cancer hasn’t affected me personally or in my family,” Kaylor said. “But the statistics say something like one in eight women will be affected by it.”

Kaylor has suffered only minor injuries skydiving. Once she broke a finger when it snagged on someone else in the air, and there are the normal bumps and bruises of hitting the door while exiting the plane.

She’s been forced to use her reserve parachute only once.

“I’ve been fortunate so far,” Kaylor said. “You don’t get as many malfunctions. Statistically, it is safer than driving to the airport.”

Most of us will have to take her word on that.