ADVENTURE Courtesy of Meghan Johnson/ Esquire Network
NINJA from Page 25
NEW ALPACA
STYLES
ARRIVING DAILY!
26 November 17, 2016
“It’s pretty uncharacteristic of me to do something like this,” Regenold admits. Matt Normile, She didn’t make the cut for American Ninja Warrior — Alexandra Regenold and something that didn’t surprise her — but she got a call Bobby Reedy back about participating in the college version with a guy represent their Buff pride. from CU “who’s a superfan.” “Which was Bobby [Reedy],” Regenold says. “And so then they got us in contact.” Rounding out the three-member team is Matt Normile, a Colorado native from Monument. The junior is studying aerospace engineering. His background, perhaps unsurprisingly, is also in climbing. “I wasn’t really good at all the hopping, stuff like that,” he says. “That scared the crap out of me.” For Normile, climbing is a sport he has had less time for these days since his busy schedule keeps him occupied. But he has found a renewed interest in the popular Boulder pastime since being chosen for the competition. “[I] kind of lost that interest in climbing coming to college just because I was so busy. I kind of stopped doing it all together,” he says. “But starting to train for this show I regained that interest, and I’ve actually been doing it almost every day since the show, so I was really glad to get that passion back.” Reedy and Normile are both members of the CU chapter of Alpha Sigma Phi. Reedy asked his fraternity brothers if they were interested in sending in tryout videos, and a few members did, but it was only Normile who was chosen to be on the show. Normile and Reedy had climbed together prior to being on the show, but the pair only met Regenold during their last minute training. To prepare, the three CU students practiced at gyms and courses specifically designed to mimic the obstacles found in the Ninja Warrior series. As part of their last-minute training, they worked out together at the Warrior Playground, a gym in Longmont, that has some of the classic Ninja Warrior obstacles. They also trained together at a parkour specialized gym in Boulder that features various strength and movement training obstacles. “They’ve got open gym on Mondays and Wednesdays, and they’ve got a really sketchy warped wall there and then a trampoline and a pit and it was cool. It was a fun time,” Regenold says. Not only did the students train in gyms, but also at the home courses of previous American Ninja Warrior competitors. “I went up to Brian Arnold’s place in Fort Collins, and he and [Ian] Dory, who has also been on the show ... and I trained. [It] was horrifying because they’re amazing. They’re insane,” Regenold says. “They ... were training for [Team Ninja Warrior] too. So it was like speed trials, and we’d have to sprint around the house, and then there’s a garage door sliver that we had to jump on and run across, and PVC pipe that we were running across, and ropes we were swinging from. They had so much stuff, it was kind of crazy.” After training, the student competitors flew to Los Angeles, California, where they stayed for a long weekend to film the competition. “It was really fun. It was a free vacation, they paid for everything,” Normile says. Boulder Weekly