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18 New Englanders are competing on this season of ‘American Ninja Warrior’
Plus two Guinness world record holders, and the crew from Fall River returns.
I’m ready to get my ninja on.
As an “American Ninja Warrior” super-fan who has covered the NBC show for a few seasons now, I look forward to season premieres the way my dad looks forward to baseball’s opening day. I follow top ninjas the way my dad follows the Red Sox.
Season 17 premiered June 2, but according to show reps, we’ll see some of our first New England competitors — 18 total — starting June 9 and in the coming weeks.
For the uninitiated, the NBC sports reality competition series — co-hosted by Matt Iseman, Akbar Gbaja-Biamila and Zuri Hall — started in 2009, based on the Japanese show “Sasuke.” Obstacles change with the seasons. (Example here.) While the show has a fun, loose vibe, it’s no “Double Dare.”
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The sport of ninja is a signature house-blend of rock climbing, parkour, gymnastics, a dash of track with an X-Games vibe — and no other sport translates. In past seasons, we’ve seen former pro athletes — including former NFL players, track stars, Olympic gymnasts and UFC fighters — fail miserably.
On the other hand, New Englanders seem to dominate this sport.
In Season 15, 17 New Englanders started out, and four made the national finals: 4-foot-11 Taylor “Teej” Johnson, now 31, of Bridgewater, who set the record for the shortest athlete to ever qualify for nationals; then-high school students Addy Herman of Pembroke and her boyfriend Noah Meunier of Lakeville; and Jonathan Godbout of Sterling. Meunier was the last New Englander standing that season, finishing third overall. (Men and women run the same courses; there are no separate events. It’s historically men who win the overall competition.)
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In Season 16, 18 New Englanders started the season. Meunier placed third. Herman won the 2024 ANW Women’s Championship, which aired as a stand-alone special, taking the trophy and $50,000 home to Pembroke.
She’ll look to defend the title in this year’s Women’s Championship, airing as a stand-alone special after season 17, according to a show rep.
While we have many ninja and rock climbing gyms in southern New England, a slew of the best train at Vitality Obstacle Fitness in Fall River. Meunier, 19, and Herman, 19, both coach at Vitality and met there. So many ninjas sing its praises, it’s emerged as a sort of breeding ground for the nation’s top ninjas. (Shout-out to Coach Jordan Thurston. They love you.)
Season 17, which filmed last fall in Vegas, is underway now with big changes: Every round of the competition is now in Vegas — no more LA. The biggest change: No Mt. Midoriyama this season. Finals will include one-on-one head-to-head races, similar to what we’ve seen in spin-off “Ninja Vs Ninja.” A new bracket-style tournament will determine who gets the $250,000 grand prize.
I’m expecting both Meunier and Herman to have standout seasons — both seem to be only getting better, despite the fact that Herman tells me she’s coming back from injury. Side note: the couple set a Guinness World Record in January for, Herman tells me, “The fastest time to complete a ‘mammoth’ obstacle course by a mixed pair.” #PowerCouple.
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Another Massachusetts power couple: New Bedford’s James “The Beast” McGrath, 38, and his fiancé, Middleborough elementary school teacher Allyssa Beird, 34.
Beird, a four-time national finalist, returns for the first time since Season 14. While injured, she took up underwater photography in Cape Cod Bay. (Underwater pumpkin-carving looks amazing.) I love that her mom — 62-year-old barn manager/ninja vet Daria Beird from Vernon, Conn. — also competes this season, for her fifth time.
Ahead of tonight’s episode, I reached out to McGrath, a veteran star, and Herman, a rising young talent.
‘The Beast’
McGrath, a ninja coach in Plymouth, has competed on the show 12 times, with 25 career buzzers, according to his count. (You hit the buzzer after a completed course.)
He’s witnessed firsthand the growth of the sport from its infancy. Fifteen years ago, ninja wasn’t about speed — it was just about “not falling,” he says.
Just watch old clips of early seasons. It’s like watching basketball from the ’50s versus the NBA today. Night and day— literally. Early seasons were also shot during the daytime. They now film overnight, as Johnson has explained to me. “It starts at sunset and goes until sunrise,” the Mass. General employee told me in ’23. The temps in Vegas can get crazy hot, and also, “it looks cooler.” (True.)
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Today, top ninjas — some as young as 15 — fly through the course.
Age (or lack of it) is another change. “I looked around on set a few times, and thought: I don’t think there’s anyone here who I’m not 20 years older than,” McGrath tells me with a laugh. “When I started out, mid to late-30s was the average age — that’s not the case anymore.
A Seattle native, McGrath says he started watching “Sasuke” back when it aired as “Ninja Warrior” on the long-gone cable channel G4.
“‘American Ninja Warrior’ didn’t exist. I saw the Japanese version, and was so taken with it, I tried to start planning a trip to Japan to sign up,” he said. But by translating the Japanese website “the hard way— Google Translate didn’t exist,” he realized “you had to have a Japanese address to apply.”
When “American Ninja Warrior” season 1 started, he was flat-out with college midterms. But for season 2, he was determined: “I was like, “I’m going to California. I’m waiting in line on the beach, I’m spending the night in my car.”
He made it on the show — but didn’t make it far.
“I walked up to the starting line, and all of a sudden, I’m almost certain what I had was a panic attack. I fell on the first obstacle,” he tells me with laughs. He hit his stride on Season 3.
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McGrath met Beird — a Kingston native and former gymnast — nine years ago, through a ninja training session he ran in Fairfield, Connecticut.
The two moved to New Bedford in 2020. McGrath popped the question during season 14 after a storybook comeback from injury to hit the buzzer on the mega-wall (a bonus feature that earns you $10,000).
He laughs when I ask him about it. “I got really excited, and ripped off my shirt and threw it. Then I didn’t want to propose without a shirt on — that would look weird. I was looking for my shirt, and I couldn’t find it and was like ‘ahh, I’m wasting time,’ So I just went and did it.” (She said yes.)
Young ninjas have grown up watching stars like “The Beast” on the show.
“Some of these kids — 18,19, 20 years old — have been training as long as I have. It’s crazy,” he said.
McGrath trains at Vitality with younger ninjas, including Herman. Training “with a group of young people at the pinnacle of the sport — seeing what they’re doing — [got me] prepared for this new season.”
The women’s champion
Herman, 19, is part of the new crop of young ninjas who grew up watching the show.
The reigning Women’s Champ started out in gymnastics at age 6, but quit at age 11 due to a fractured foot. She fell in love with ninja and never looked back.
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After graduating from Liberty University’s Online Private High School in ’23, Herman decided to take a gap year “that’s still going,” she tells me with a laugh from her Pembroke home. “Right now, a lot of the things I started pursuing during my gap year ended up working out really well.”
One highlight: a mission trip to Sierra Leone last year to build a ninja course at an orphanage. “I’m definitely planning on going back,” she said. “It’s super cool though to get updates from them — they send me videos, and it seems like they’ve gotten a lot better.”
She said she’s also coaching ninja in Pembroke, and started public speaking, including at a few Massachusetts schools.
She and Meunier — an Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School grad, and now an electrical apprentice — also coach at Vitality.
She’s also planning another Mass. General fundraiser in Fall River for later this year, she says. She’d organized a ninja-course cancer fundraiser, “Vitalize,” in conjunction with Massachusetts General Hospital. Between events in 2022 and 2023, she raised some $23,700, she tells me.
Herman went into this season having just recovered from injuring her right ankle at her home gym, tearing ligaments and breaking two bones.
“I was cleared to compete, literally, three days before I flew out” for season 17, she says. Her ankle “was pretty bad” and she opted for physical therapy rather than surgery. It was “a very long recovery.”
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Leading up to this season, “I was forced to take a step back. I did everything I could to work out my upper body, but not running courses was super different. So going into this season, I’m honestly just so incredibly grateful that I have the opportunity to compete,” she said. “I have a true passion for this sport. The chance to compete is more than enough.”
The Fall River crew
The Vitality crew is tight.
“I don’t think there’s a better gym in the world. It starts at the top with the main coach and owner, Jordan Thurston,” McGrath tells me, echoing a sentiment I’ve heard from others. “He knows what he’s doing. He’s got a great program. He’s produced phenomenal athletes. Iron sharpens iron.”
Herman says she, McGrath, Meunier, Johnson, and Luke Dillon — who has since moved from Rhode Island to Florida— are among the Season 17 ninjas who train in Spindle City. Beird also occasionally trains at the gym.
“All of us training together elevates all of us to an even higher level,” Herman said, adding that Thurston travels to show filming with the ninjas.
Johnson told me previously, during showtime, “We show up with a strong base. Everyone knows our crew.”
Both McGrath and Herman said they were nervous but excited for new obstacles and racing in season 17.
They’re “something that you have to be able to adapt to,” Herman said. “But that’s a huge part of ninja: your ability to adapt.”
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The Women’s Champ says she’s also ready to defend her title later this year: “One thing I’ve learned from ninja is to use pressure to make you better, instead of letting it hold you back.”
“American Ninja Warrior” airs Mondays 8 p.m. on NBC, streaming next day on Peacock. Learn more here. Lauren Daley is a freelance culture writer and regular Boston.com contributor. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.
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