Ninja warriors
UW team takes part in TV show
We’re still a ways from March, but a team of Badgers is already making a tournament run.
A trio of University of Wisconsin-Madison students competed in “Team Ninja Warrior: College Madness” last Tuesday and advanced to the finals, which air this Tuesday on Esquire.
“College Madness” is a five-episode offshoot of “Team Ninja Warrior,” which itself is a spinoff of “American Ninja Warrior,” a competition that sends participants through a series of physically challenging obstacles. The five-episode “College Madness” season began Nov. 22. The tournament features teams of three athletes from schools around the country.
The Badger team includes Hartland’s Taylor Amann, who finished fourth in the Big Ten in the pole vault for the Badgers as a sophomore last season; Andrew Philibeck, a Freedom native and senior at UWMadison; and Zack Kemmerer, a UW-Madison grad student who had a successful wrestling career at the University of Pennsylvania and goes by the nickname “Science Ninja.”
When Philibeck and Kemmerer decided to compete, they asked Amman to join them, since each team needed two men and one woman. Philibeck knew Amann from their freshman year of college. She was a competitive gymnast from age 5 until her senior year of high school, when she quit to focus on track.
That athletic background was helpful for the ninja warrior competition, Amann said: “The strength, the speed, the coordination and body awareness is all really similar.”
Aside from doing a little specialized training on a kids ninja warrior course at her old gymnastics gym, Midwest Twisters in Hartland, Amann said she stuck with her usual workouts to prepare, including summer track exercises from her coach.
“But I felt really good — even though we only trained for a month and a half, I felt ready,” said Amann, who is studying retailing and consumer behavior.
Both Philibeck and Kemmerer trained on different ninja courses in Wisconsin, Amann said. Kemmerer is the team captain; he competed on “American Ninja Warrior” earlier this year. He appeared in two summer episodes, advancing to the regional final in Indianapolis but was eliminated before moving on to Las Vegas.
Philibeck, who finished second in the state as a wrestler in high school, said he’s a “huge fan” of the “Ninja Warrior” competitions and shows and has been training for about two years. He tried out for “American Ninja Warrior” earlier this year, didn’t make it, but had better luck teaming up with Kemmerer and Amann. They went through the application process earlier this year, were accepted in July and kicked their training into high gear from there.
Helping them prepare was Suamico’s Drew Knapp, who competed in two episodes of “American Ninja Warrior” that aired in June and July. Knapp has a number of the sorts of obstacles used on the show at his home — he plans to open a ninja gym in the Green Bay area next year — and the easy access to equipment like a warped wall was a plus for the Badger squad.
Philibeck said he felt well-prepared for what he was in for.
“It was kind of what I thought it would be,” Philibeck said. “I watched ‘Team Ninja’ from last season. Watching that, I kind of had an idea what the obstacles would be. They can be pretty hard obstacles, but they’re also meant to be fast — this is a race, you’re racing the person next to you (and) it’s whoever hits the buzzer first . ... So when I was training all summer, I knew I had to train for speed and agility.”
What’s on the line for the Badgers?
“It’s glory, bragging rights and there is a sum of money — but we can’t talk about that,” Philibeck said.
Philibeck and his teammates can’t reveal the results of the competition, which was filmed in Los Angeles in August. But their fans already know they at least are in the championship.
On last Tuesday’s episode, the Badgers blew
past teams from Maryland and Michigan. They’ll take on UCLA and then the winner of MIT vs. Georgia in the first-ever “Team Ninja Warrior” college championship that airs Tuesday on the Esquire Network.
“It was an unreal experience to say the least,” Amann said. “It was really intimidating, standing next to my opponent, because we were standing side by side . ... As I was beating my opponent, I felt more confident.”
Amann said because their team was the last to arrive at the competition, they had to do everything in one day: film interviews and take photographs, plus compete in multiple rounds. It made for a long but (so far as viewers know) a successful one.
Amann said Philibeck and Kemmerer want her to try out for “American Ninja Warrior,” but she’ll have to wait until May when she turns 21, the minimum age to compete, to really consider it.
“I think it would be fun, and I have the ability to be on it,” she said.