13-year-old leads world championship 605 Ninja teammates to big finish

Julia Marcus navigates the massive jungle-gym-looking course with one “I can’t believe she did that” moment after another.

Graceful displays of agility, of tip-toed balance and brute strength.

Hanging from a ball and chain with her left hand, hoisting herself up to swing and hook into a loop with the right.

Launching from a vertical pole hanging in midair to a swinging bar.

Walking two consecutive slacklines.

Somehow stepping from one wobbly, 6-inch round pillar to another.

And finally – mercifully – climbing what looks to be a 20-foot rope to ring the bell.

It’s three minutes of slow and smooth methodical madness.

The perfect run gave Marcus the title in the 13 & Under division of the Ultimate Ninja Athlete Association World Championships on July 31 in Las Vegas.

“My brain could not even process what happened until the competition was all the way done,” Marcus said. “It was more than I could ever imagine. It was crazy.”

That performance didn’t guarantee the Sioux Falls Christian eight-grader the world title. Her qualifying run was the second-highest score, which meant there was one competitor left to go after she was done.

All that was left was to sit and watch the girl who had already beat her once.

“I knew that she was really good, really fast,” Marcus said.

But at those wobbly pillars – of varying heights and arranged in a circle – the girl had to put a foot down, losing points.

“She was doing really well,” Marcus said. “Then, she came to the balance obstacle and just made one little mistake. I think she tried to do it a little bit too quickly and lost a little bit of control.

“I looked at my sister and my mom, I was like, ‘She fell, what just happened?’”

Marcus was just one of 30 athletes from the 605 Ninja gym in Sioux Falls who qualified for the world championships.

Of those, six made the finals at the Orleans Hotel.

Other finalists included Elliot Leonard, seventh in 7U; Myles Knight, fourth in 9U; Rylee Punt, ninth in 13U; Addison Schmeichel, ninth in 7U; and Katie Humpal 15th in 11U.

The gym, located in the Western Mall, opened in March 2018, with about 50 students.

Today, there are more than 430 who pay a monthly fee for instruction and practice time. It’s so popular, the gym is in the process of a major expansion.

“We were so happy with the outcome” in Las Vegas, said Lacy Steinberg, who owns 605 Ninja with her husband, Jason. “It’s our first year, and we had no idea how it would go or what to expect. For six kids to move on to finals and one win the whole thing, we were really happy with all of the students.”

Ninja is a growing sport around the world with athletes of all ages, driven by the popularity of “American Ninja Warrior,” a television series on the NBC network.

Jason Steinberg qualified for the “American Ninja Warrior” competition and leads instruction at the gym.

Lucy Steinberg was a gymnastics coach before she and Jason decided to open 605 Ninja. They traveled to nine gyms across the country to learn the ins and outs of the operation, from building obstacles to the business model.

“I thought this is exactly what kids want to do,” she said.

The business is an academy first, but there’s also a family entertainment side. Ninja 605 has open-gym hours for anybody who wants to come and test his or her skills and burn off  energy.

Open gym is $13 per hour, and the facility is also available for group bookings.

Steinberg said there are distinct differences between ninja and the gymnastics world she came from. The obvious one is the athletes are up off the ground most of the time.

And ninja competitors have to be strong in all parts of the body.

“The growth and strength and confidence they’ve gotten has far exceeded my exceptions,” she said. “Ninja makes kids stronger than I ever thought possible.”

Marcus took to it immediately, which wasn’t too much of a surprise.

“I always liked hanging on things and the challenge of trying to get through an obstacle,” she said. “As a kid, it’s just a way to burn energy. Now, it’s a passion of mine, being there with the other ninjas.”

When she was little, the Marcus family watched the television show, which inspired some high-level ingenuity from her father, Matt.

“We’d be at the playground and she’d say, ‘Make me a course like on the TV show,’” he said. “I’d try to make the hardest course on the playground, and pretty soon I couldn’t do it anymore.”

When 605 Ninja opened, Marcus was all in.

“I said, I want to be on that show and be a ninja, but there wasn’t a place for me to practice,” she said. “When 605 Ninja opened up, that was the best thing.”

When it first opened, Steinberg said people would stop in to see what it was all about. There were some misperceptions that it was only for adults.

The contingent that traveled to Las Vegas included three adults.

Overall, the students are about an even split between genders, Steinberg said.

“It’s for everybody,” she said. “We had to educate every single person who walked in our door.”

One adult who probably won’t be swinging from the rafters anytime soon is Matt Marcus, though his kids always encourage him to give it a try.

He thinks it’s a great sport, and he has high praise for the professionalism and quality of the coaching that Marcus gets at 605 Ninja.

“The kids ask me that at least a couple times a month,” he said. “No man, I like to play golf, stick to what I like and do stuff that isn’t going to injure me.”

Marcus said she gets nervous after four years of the training. But not scared.

“When you have been doing it a long time, there are very few obstacle that you get scared to do,” she said. “Sometimes, I think some of the obstacles are sketchy or weird, but that doesn’t stop us from doing them.”

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