COLORADO SPRINGS – A young Colorado Springs athlete is about to showcase her talent, on a national stage. By the way, she’s only 11-years-old.
Jaleesa Himke will be featured Saturday night, on American Ninja Warrior Junior. Himke says she’s easily competed in 50 junior ninja competitions, but says this one was the most memorable.
She was one of only 64 kids across the country, selected for the course (through a video submission), and says this type of competition is a lot more fun than conventional sports.
“If you don’t like following rules, you can just come do this. And if you like swinging around and not having to use balls and stuff, you can just swing on bars and do all kinds of different stuff,” she told News5.
Himke can’t go into a lot of detail about the course or results until after the episode airs, but says her favorite parts of the course were the upper body obstacles.
It’s not just her athletic abilities that will be in the NBC spotlight, though.
It turns out she’s a talented baker, too, and makes very unique cookies.
the NBC producers were so impressed, they came out to film it as part of this week’s episode.
“I had an idea to make all the ninjas in cookies and I decorated them with all sorts of candies to make them look like the popular ninjas,” she explained.
“I had already baked them, but they filmed me decorating them. I was really excited for it, just to be able to do all the baking and decorating on TV – it was really fun,” Himke added.
American Ninja Warrior will air Saturday, March 2nd at 7:30 p.m.
