When met with a challenge, Western Washington University student JoJo Grubesic is the type of person who uses the obstacle as motivation to work harder. In some cases, the obstacle is a metaphor, and in other cases, like when she’s participating in American Ninja Warrior, these obstacles are quite literal.
Grubesic, who just completed her freshman year at WWU, moved all over the country growing up, forcing her to find something that connected all of the places. That turned out to be ninja gyms. Moving could have felt like a negative, but Grubesic turned it into a positive.
“Moving all over the country has really allowed me to make an incredible amount of connections I don’t think most people my age would have. Especially within the ninja community. Moving allowed me to be a member of the community in different gyms, allowing me to make lifelong relationships,” explained Grubesic.
This love for ninja began in elementary school when she tried some ninja-type obstacles at a climbing gym. She had seen American Ninja Warrior Jr., and the idea of running, jumping, and swinging through the obstacles appealed to her. One of her family’s moves landed them in Texas near what she would call a ‘real’ ninja gym. There she was coached by American Ninja Warrior Nick Fordney, and he experienced propelled her interest and skill to the next level, giving her the confidence to serve as a course tester in the Alamo Dome for American Ninja Warrior season 14. After participating in the course testing process, she knew she wanted to one day be on the show.
“They ended up lowering the age limit, so I was like ‘oh my gosh, I’m old enough to apply!’ I applied for my first season, which was 16, and got accepted to the show. We ended up filming in Los Angeles that year at Universal Studios, and it was incredible,” said Grubesic.
Grubesic has continued to compete in American Ninja Warrior since then, with initial success on the upper-body obstacles but struggling with the agility obstacles, going down on Broken Bridge and Log Runner in back-to-back seasons. As with all aspects of her life, instead of letting those falls deter her, she used them as motivation, turning her training to focus on agility. Spoiler alert. In the most recent season, season 18, Grubesic’s training paid off, and she made it past the agility obstacle Diamond Dash.
While Grubesic was spending time training at ninja gyms across the country, she was also working her way through school like other teenagers. She would find herself in Arizona for her last three years of high school, and decided to go out for the track team. Her dad had been a high jumper and thought she might enjoy it. She initially tried high jumping, but the bar wasn’t quite high enough for her. Grubesic likes flying through the air, so the pole vault ended up being her event of choice.
Pole vault has a steep learning curve, and while she initially enjoyed it, she was having limited success. Due to the requirement of having a certified pole-vaulting coach for safety reasons, Grubesic was forced to train at a different location than her team. This unexpected circumstance turned out to be a blessing. She ended up training under Nick Hysong, who was the men’s pole vault gold medalist at the 2000 Olympics. Another unexpected boost was that the track coach at the high school she moved to was none other than the Olympic gold medalist decathlete Dan O’Brien.
While starting pole vaulting as a junior seemed late in the game, the body control she had developed through her ninja training translated well to the sport. She improved enough over her two high school seasons to make the WWU track and field team.
Just like the ninja community, she has found great people at WWU. In an unlikely event, there were four freshman pole-vaulters this past season, and Grubesic and the other three have become fast friends. The camaraderie has felt similar to what she feels in the ninja community. She has loved the energy at the track meets and is looking forward to being at WWU and a part of the team for the next three years while she completes her double major in Political Science and Sociology.
Grubesic is excited to keep putting in the work for pole-vault and American Ninja Warrior. “I like to be the best version of myself. I love putting in the hard work because I think it’s so satisfying to see the results. Not just the external, like wins, but the incremental improvements,” said Grubesic.
These incremental improvements allowed Grubesic to contribute to Western’s team win at the 2026 GNAC outdoor Track & Field Championships by narrowly beating out rival Central Washington University, and allowed her to keep completing more obstacles in her ninja competitions.
To see Grubesic compete, you can tune into American Ninja Warrior, watch her compete on the Ninja Sport Network, or head out to a WWU Track meet to support her and our other local collegiate athletes.
