It’s that time of year where the idea of setting new goals for a new year becomes a main topic of conversation. Are you setting goals? If so, how do you keep your goals foremost in mind, not just in January, but all year long?
Eastmont Middle Principal Stacy Kurtzhals and her son Tyler have been working toward the same goal since Tyler was a little boy – becoming an American Ninja Warrior — and say achieving anything takes failure and consistency.
When Tyler was 8-year-old, he saw his first episode of American Ninja Warrior. “It looked like a giant playground at the time,” says Tyler. “So as a kid, I was really interested and from there I just found stuff in my backyard to play on.”
Soon, Tyler’s father was building him obstacles to work with, and the family was traveling to competitions.
“I was selected for American Ninja Warrior Junior about five years ago,” says Tyler. “After that I was introduced to this whole world of different competitions, different people, and it just turned into this community that I love.”
Stacy Kurtzhals says the family gave up trips to do ninja trips. “But we turned them into family trips and when he was making progress and able to make top 10 in the world competitions, we knew it was not something that was just a hobby,” she says.
With few competition options locally, Tyler and his family travel East and at times to the West coast to compete. Kurtzhals says she worked to help Tyler achieve his goals rather than pushing too hard. “Initially, I was out in the middle of everything,” she says. “I videoed everything, I wanted to be involved.”
But in the Ninja Warrior world, fellow athletes support each other and help each other grow. “The way they progress with each other, it’s different than any other sport,” Kurtzhals says. “They’re not out to beat each other, they’re out to beat the course.”
Where Kurtzhals did intervene was to balance Tyler’s competitions with his success at school. “I’ve had to make some really hard decisions as a mom. If he’s not pulling his own, I’ve pulled competitions from him. He had a significant competition he was supposed to go to in Florida and he didn’t do his stuff,” she says. “This is even at a college level; I still check his grades. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as a mom, to watch the disappointment that he had in not competing.”
Tyler says being an American Ninja Warrior has also helped him to learn from his failures. “I’d say it has taught me to persevere more than anything. It’s like the Rocky quote, ‘It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward,’” he says. “So, the biggest thing it has taught me is whatever knocks me down, just get back up. You’re not done, you can recover. Failure is mostly a motivator at this point.”
Tyler still has to take time to process his failures, recalling last year’s American Ninja Warrior where he failed early on in the competition. “I was devastated,” he says, “just distraught for a good month or two but once I wrapped my head around it, the off season of the show turned into the best competition season I’ve ever had in my life.”
Tyler also uses his failures to be an example to the younger generations on social media. “He doesn’t just post when he does well,” Kurtzhals says, “he posts how many times it took him to get o that point. So many of the younger ninjas look up to him and as they watch, they need to learn how to fail too.”
Kurtzhals says Tyler has also proven to be a motivator for students at her school while reminding students to be mindful of what they say and post on social media. “We do a lot of digital citizenship things in our district,” she says. “It’s important for them to understand the things they put on their now don’t go away. As Tyler is going through college and looking into a career, the things he posted when he was 15 are still on social media.”
Tyler is working toward a degree in kinesiology, the study of movement, and continues to move forward with his goals as a ninja warrior. “My main thing is to get a buzzer; I haven’t finished a course on the show and it eats at me, because I can do so well everywhere else and at the show I just fall through.”
The Kurtzhals agree that to succeed at your goals, you need to set time for yourself, set small easily achievable goals, and stay consistent.
“If you can set those smaller goals, as you accomplish them, it just makes the bigger ones seem a little less scary,” says Tyler. “It makes it a little easier to stay on the path to whatever you want to do.”
