Meet 2 Louisiana athletes on ‘American Ninja Warrior’ | Entertainment/Life

Two Louisiana athletes have their sights set on reaching “Mount Midoriyama.”

For the uninitiated, that’s the last obstacle between an “American Ninja Warrior” finalist and $1 million.

The NBC competition series’ 18th season will enter the central regional qualifying phase with Monday’s episode. New Orleans native Genny Culotta Hills and Joseph Lukachick of Geismar are scheduled to compete — sprinting over “shrinking steps,”  swinging through the “kite surfer” and grabbing narrow ledges for dear life in the “wall-to-wall.” One wrong move, and they’ll fall into the pool below, abruptly ending that run.

The “Ninja” obstacle course phases change each season so that new hopefuls won’t totally know what they’re facing.

As the season progresses, winners advance to regional finals, semi-finals and finals, all taking place in Las Vegas. The finals are where they’ll attempt to conquer “Mount Midoriyama.”

The Louisiana hopefuls have trained years for their moment on the “American Ninja Warrior” stage.

Stumbling into it   

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hills was introduced to Ninja workouts at a small Jefferson gym, NOLA Muscle Park. The facility was also where she first heard about the NBC series. At that time, the city was behind the curve as far as Ninja goes.

“My coaches at the gym and everyone I did it with were kind of struggling to get business and keep the gym popular,” Hills, 38, said. “That was what gave me the idea, ‘Well, maybe I could help grow the sport in our community.'”

Her coaches and fellow gym members convinced her to apply for the show, which entailed an application and videos of her Ninja workouts. 

“To be honest, I love that it is both a personal and a team sport. It’s a lot more mental toughness than it is just physical strength, which I love,” she said.

Hills says she grew up loving competition, and she and her twin sister played various sports.

With that foundation, Hills entered a few of the many Ninja competitions happening around the country, training for each one as it approached by keeping up on her skills and working through obstacle courses at the gym — mimicking ones from the show.

Once an athlete gets the call from “American Ninja Warrior” that they have been selected to compete, there’s about a month until the athlete has to go to the Las Vegas contest site. By the time she was recruited, NOLA Muscle Park had closed, and Hills was training at Crescent City Ninjas in Gretna.

Hills has worked as a physician assistant in neurocritical care for brain injury, and in 2020 was hired as academic director of the new Ochsner Xavier Physician Assistant Program.

This year, Hills and her husband relocated to London, where she’s already found a new Ninja gym. 

Growing up Ninja

Lukachick, 27, has been following “American Ninja Warrior” since childhood.

Like Hills, the pandemic also nudged him into Ninja training.

“We were bored. My parents have some property, so we’re like, ‘Hey, let’s build a Ninja course.’ We cut up some telephone poles and dug some holes and built a pretty big course that we played around.”

In 2021, four-time “American Ninja Warrior” competitor Jared Greer spoke at Fellowship Church, the Prairieville church which Lukachick attends. Greer’s nonprofit organization Overcoming Obstacles visits churches and schools, bringing “American Ninja Warrior”-type obstacles and sharing the gospel.

After talking to Greer and finding a local Ninja gym, AIM Gym, Lukachick said he fell in love with the sport.

Two years ago, Lukachick submitted an application to the show, but he wasn’t picked. Instead, he was a part of a team that tests the obstacles for safety before the event starts. 

Last year, he re-applied and secured his slot for Season 18. 

When he’s not at work at Home Protection Systems or at the gym, the husband and father of a 3-month-old daughter puts in Ninja time at home.

“The family Ninja course is a little rundown now because it’s been sitting outside for six years now, but me and my wife were able to build a house two years ago,” he explained. “What we’ve done in our living room is put rings up and a big bar that you can swing across and kind of traverse the entirety of the living room.”

His wife goes along with this setup, as she did Ninja alongside him until her pregnancy.

Lukachick, a childhood leukemia survivor, has found Ninja training to be less physically impacting to his hips, knees, ankles and such, since his bones are more brittle since going through cancer treatment.

“You’re basically always on mats, so you already have that cushion when you are running and you have shoes. It is very physically taxing, but not in a harsh manner on your body,” he said. “I was like, ‘Hey, I could really thrive in this and use this as a great exercise.'”

Last spring, Lukachick was able to start running again and started pushing himself to get his endurance up. This gave the athlete a head start on his reality show training. After his selection, he opted to maintain his regimen in the month leading up to show filming.

In Las Vegas for the big day, Lukachick recalls the nerves not setting in until about 10 seconds before his turn on the mat.

“When you got on the stage, it was like, ‘Oh, OK, I’m here. … I’m about to do this,'” he said. “But it was just that pressure of, ‘Well, how far can I get it?’ I think that was in the back of my head, because you just want to do good.”