Most dads play catch or go fishing with their sons to bond, but for father and son duo Jon and Wyatt Driscoll, they bond by jumping out of planes together. Although they live in Austin, Skydive Spaceland San Marcos is their home away from home. What started as a gift for Wyatt's 18th birthday has turned into a hobby that they both share, spending almost every weekend they can up in the air. Wyatt is 20 now, and in just two short years, he has made over 750 jumps while Jon has made over 450 jumps with most of them being made together. After graduating from the University of Texas in 1993, Jon had his first taste of skydiving with a group of friends.
“Just like everybody else it’s on your bucket list, you think you’re only going to do it once,” Jon said.
It’s common practice for one’s first skydive to be a tandem dive where divers are strapped to an instructor. Jon had somehow gotten signed up for a level one AFF dive, which is the first step of getting one’s license.
“Instead of being strapped to somebody in a tandem, I had two instructors holding on, one on each side, and you had these very specific things you have to do on that jump because you’re trying to work through a progression to go to the next level,” Jon said. “I was young. I was cocky. So I said hey guys we’re gonna finish these checks really fast and then I want everybody to give them ‘Hook ‘em Horns’ to the camera and have some fun.”
Jon reflected that his mindset wasn’t the best approach for a first jump.
“When we came off the plane I immediately looked down for the ground because that was one of the checks and basically put us in an unstable position, so we started doing a bunch of flips and ended up on our back; so it was a pretty spicy jump,” Jon said.
When he landed his first jump, the sun was setting, so he didn’t have a chance to go again that day. That first jump stayed with Jon for years. He felt that he wanted to redeem himself one day. Years later, Jon trained at iFly, an indoor skydiving facility, and, with the help of his instructor Woz, he made some successful jumps out of a plane.
“I thought I was finished. I redeemed myself and then that’s where Wyatt comes in,” Jon said. Wyatt was 15 when he saw his dad training at iFly, and he felt inspired to do the same.
“So for my 16th birthday my dad was like, ‘Awesome, let’s go do a tandem,’” Wyatt said. “Well you have to be 18, so we found that one out the hard way.”
Wyatt had to wait a few years, but the day after his 18th birthday, his dad surprised him by taking him to Skydive Spaceland San Marcos for his first jump.
“I thought it was going to be a one-and-done, kind of check it off the list and be done with it,” Wyatt said. “By the time I got down though, I essentially went, ‘I want to go again.’” Wyatt was hooked; he bought his second tandem and drove out the next weekend to jump again.
“You could not wipe the smile off his face,” Jon said. “He just fell in love and decided this is what he was going to do.”
Jon saw his son’s passion and realized that this was something that they could do together. Skydiving instantly became a shared common interest.
“We would go from sitting on the couch not having a lot to talk about to now we are driving 45 minutes from Austin to San Marcos talking the entire time about skydiving gear and techniques, jumping out of airplanes together all day, then driving home talking about it and then the entire week catching up about it. The father son duo spent as much time diving together as they could before Wyatt moved to Ohio for college.
“That gives me the excuse to fly out and spend weekends with him in Cleveland where we jump there or take trips [to jump] like we did to San Diego,” Jon said. The pair jump together as often as they can. “We were pretty close [on number of jumps] for a long time until he went to college, then he’d come home for the summers and get way ahead of me,” Jon said.
Jon admits skill-wise that his son Wyatt is more advanced due to having more jumps than him, so it inspires him to work harder.
Jon and Wyatt have their coach rating and are both mentors at Skydive Spaceland.
“Skydive Spaceland has a great program where if you have less than 100 jumps then you can go with a coach rated person, and they’ll cover [the coaches] jump; so we can mentor and teach those newer jumpers,” Jon said.
Jon mentioned that there’s a novelty to their father son bond, many divers know them as ‘The Driscolls.’
“The only people that care about skydiving are skydivers and we like to talk about skydiving, so there’s nothing better than going to a party and somebody actually expresses interest,” Jon joked.
“We’ll go to family events, and one of us will start talking about skydiving; and our families all heard about it at this point, so they’re kind of just like, ‘All right, cool,’” Wyatt said. “So we can entertain each other.”
The pair has influenced friends and family to try skydiving, with Jon’s youngest son Wade gearing up to do his first tandem jump soon.
“One of the things that’s been very helpful for us is that we have a similar mentality about [skydiving],” Jon said. “We truly treat it and feel like it’s a sport.”
Some people assume they are just addicted to the adrenaline that comes with jumping out of a plane. But for Jon and Wyatt, they are passionate about the technique, about improving, learning and growing better in the sport.
“As soon as you get good at one discipline or one part of it then you try another one and you feel like you’re starting over,” Jon said.
“For anybody who’s debated doing skydiving, I would highly recommend it,” Wyatt said. “Even if it’s something where you’re interested but you’re terrified, it’ll be an incredible experience.”
Jon reflected on when he and Wyatt first started skydiving and admitted he was nervous a lot of the time.
“It was hard for me to make the left turn into the driveway [of Skydive Spaceland], and I would ask myself in my head why am I doing this,” Jon said. “And then I would look at Wyatt, and I would be like, ‘This is why I’m doing it because I get to hang out for hours and hours with my son.’”
