NMC Resurrects Competitive Flight Team After Decades of Dormancy

“A track and field meet for aviation”: That’s how Alex Modryznski describes the National Intercollegiate Flying Association (NIFA) regional competition that Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) pilots will be attending this weekend.

Modryznski is a co-captain for NMC’s competitive flight team, which relaunched this year after a lengthy hiatus. Now, NMC is set to compete as part of the NIFA Region 3 event in Bowling Green, Ohio, which will pit the college’s pilots against flight teams from Ohio State University, Bowling Green State University, and more. The event kicks off Sunday and runs through next Friday.

According to Modryznski, he and co-captain Grace Soneral got the idea to resurrect NMC’s flight team a year and a half ago while attending AirVenture Oshkosh, a long-running air show held every July in Wisconsin. Speaking to one of the event’s organizers, they learned NMC had once had a competitive flight team.

“Someone told us, ‘Oh yeah, you guys used to compete, back in the ‘70s or ‘80s,’” Modryznski says. “That was a surprise to us, because we had no idea NMC had ever had a team.”

The news was especially striking for Soneral, who had counted NMC’s lack of flight team as a drawback when deciding which aviation school to attend.

“I was a high school athlete who competed in softball, volleyball, and golf; I always loved that competitive atmosphere,” Soneral tells The Ticker. “I was originally thinking of going to Western Michigan University, because Western has a flight team and I really wanted to have that aspect to my education.”

Soneral relayed that story to NMC’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE, formerly the Office of Possibilities) this past winter, when she and Modryznski had the opportunity to pitch the group on helping fund a new NMC flight team. OIE came through with $8,000 in seed money, and the team was off to the races.

Beyond the fun of competition, both Soneral and Modryznski say having a flight team and attending multi-school events like the one in Bowling Green sharpens aviation skills, provides terrific networking opportunities, and acts as a strong resume builder.

“It tests you in very specific areas of your aviation knowledge, and a lot of hiring managers at regional airlines and even at the legacy airlines are former competitors,” Soneral says.

Similar to a track meet, a flight competition allows teams to enter individual pilots in a variety of different events, with points up for grabs in each.

“There are a couple of written events, like creating a cross-country flight plan, or working through different scenarios for loading plans, and those are very math-based,” Modryznski explains. “There’s an aircraft recognition event, where you are shown an aircraft and have three seconds to identify make, model, and common name. There are some simulator events that we’ll have students competing in. And then there’s a pre-flight event, where you go into a hangar and there’s an airplane with 30 different issues with it, and you have to try and find as many of those as you can in 15 minutes.”

There are also actual flight-based events, but NMC won’t be competing in those this year. According to Joel Cairns, the NMC flight instructor who coaches the team, it’s typical for new teams to sit out the flying events during their first year of competition. He says NMC will be “taking some notes” at the regional this fall, with hopes of growing the team and adding flying events to the repertoire next year. There are currently six team members, and Cairns is hoping to see closer to 20-25 by 2027.

Soneral is looking forward to the addition of the flight components, having participated in a different event called the Air Race Classic earlier this year. That competition challenges all-female teams to fly a 2,700-mile loop around the southeastern United States. Soneral participated alongside fellow NMC pilots Rachel Kornoely and Emma Dyer – under the team name “Cherry Capital Cruisers. While the trio ran into weather issues that left them unable to finish the race, Soneral says it was still a valuable experience.

“We demonstrated strong aerodynamical decision making, we mitigated a lot of risk, and ultimately we were very professional with our choices and the way we conducted ourselves throughout the race,” Soneral says. “In aviation, we have what are called ‘personal minimums,’ and if the weather is worse than those standards, we're not going to fly, because we know our abilities and our aircraft's abilities. So, while we weren't able to finish that race, we learned a ton along the way, in how important it is to fine tune your calculations.”

Modryznski thinks offering competitive flight opportunities will significantly expand NMC Aviation’s nationwide visibility.

“Speaking just to my personal journey, I didn't know NMC was a thing before we came here, or that they had an aviation division at all,” Modryznski says. “When I looked online, I was finding other smaller, privately-run flight schools that had maybe one or two planes before I found NMC. We’re unique, in that we have quite a large fleet compared to the number of students we have enrolled, which means our students get to fly more. But not very many people know we're tucked away up here in northern Michigan. Being able to get out into a different state and speak with teens that are coming up and maybe looking to join an aviation college, that’s a powerful way to get the NMC name and brand out there.”