2023 NCL Youth Finals Update #2

Posted on: August 30th, 2023 by Mark Ravi No Comments

Youth Finals are just over a month away, which means that the final deadline to sign up is only hours away, and we can share some more information about the event.

Updated schedule

With a better idea of the final number of competitors, we have published an updated schedule on the Youth Finals page of our website, which has the projected start and end times for all divisions.

We will do our best to meet this schedule, but sometimes we get caught off guard, so please bear with us if we are running slightly behind.

Check out the new schedule here: https://www.ninjachallengeleague.com/finals/ninja-challenge-league-youth-finals-2023/

Spectator tickets release

We have created events in Eventbrite for spectator tickets for the NCL Youth Finals. As you can see in the updated schedule, we have separated the two days of the competition into morning sessions and afternoon sessions.

The Kids & Mature Kids divisions will compete in the morning sessions, while the Pre-Teens & Teens will compete in the afternoon sessions.

In a change from last year, youth competitors will be free to spectate any session their age group is involved in without needing to purchase a spectator ticket, even if they have been eliminated from the competition.

For example, a Kids Finalist is free to attend the morning session on Thursday, even if they do not progress to Stage 2. However, if a Kids Finalist and their parent/guardian (see below) wanted to spectate the afternoon session, they would need to purchase a spectator ticket for each session they wanted to attend.

Each youth finalist is also assigned a free parent/guardian spectator ticket for each session involving their age group, which can be accessed using a promotional code we will provide via email.

Please make sure you only claim one free ticket for each youth finalist in a given age group. If anyone claims more than one free ticket per session for each youth finalist competing, they will be barred from spectating the event and the youth finalist may be banned from competing at future competitions.

However, if you have two children competing in the same session (i.e. a Kids Finalist and a Mature Kids Finalist), you are welcome to claim a ticket for each of them.

Free parent/guardian spectator tickets for all sessions will go on sale on September 1, while general spectator entry will go on sale on September 8.

If a parent/guardian hasn’t reserved their free ticket before September 8, the NCL will not be responsible if the event reaches capacity after this date and you are unable to secure a spectator ticket.

While we have taken steps to increase the capacity of the venue, we still need to ensure that the supporters of competitors in each age group get priority access to spectator tickets.

The events are live now, but tickets for each will go on sale first thing Friday morning. The access code, along with instructions on how to reveal the hidden ticket will be emailed to you today, so be sure to check your email!

The event pages also have some FAQs that you may find helpful.

Wednesday, October 4

Thursday, October 5

Parking

To accommodate more spectators and portable toilets, The Compound Training’s allocated on-site parking will be fenced off as an overflow spectator area, so there will be NO ON-SITE PARKING directly outside the venue.

No spectators or competitors are allowed to park in the business park, as the neighbouring businesses will be operating and require those parking bays for their customers.

The map below shows three sites where parking is available:

Service Road on Dorset Road
Bunnings Bayswater Parking
Spotlight Bayswater Parking

The Service Road on Dorset Road is the closest walk and will have the least impact on surrounding businesses.

Allow at least 10 minutes to walk from the parking areas to the event.

Competitor profiles and livestream access

We are happy to confirm that we’ll be livestreaming this year’s Youth Finals and making it available privately for competitors and their supporters.

As part of this process, we’ll have some of our adult ninja legends like Kadeem “The Dream” Aarons providing live commentary of the runs of each competitor.

The key to good commentating is weaving in details about the competitor during their run, but with a staggering 220+ competitors, I don’t have capacity to research and compile all these notes myself, so we need your help!

So what can you do? You can go into your child’s account on our website and add some key details about them in the profile description field on their profile that we can export and distribute to the commentators.

Here are some examples of the sorts of details we’re looking for:

How long have they been doing ninja?
Why do they love ninja?
What is their home gym?
What’s their favourite type of obstacle?
Do they play any other sports?
How have they trained for Finals?
If they have competed at the NCL Finals or at the World Ninja League World Championships before, what was their best result?
Any other interesting facts you think are relevant?

Please be sure to update these profiles before midnight on Tuesday, September 19. If you require assistance accessing your child’s profile, please don’t hesitate to ask.

As with last year, the Youth Finals livestream will not be publicly accessible, due to ethical concerns we have around the public livestreaming of youth sports based on the potential for bullying if a competitor has an unfortunate moment on the course.

As such, we will be livestreaming on an unlisted link on our YouTube channel which will be distributed to parents of competitors only rather than the wider public. If you choose to pass this link on, please do so privately and not on a public page.

After the competition is over, we will be editing the runs of competitors and making them available to parents to upload on their own accounts afterwards.

If your child does have an amazing moment and achieves Total Victory, as was the case with Casey McLaren in 2022, please allow the NCL a chance to share it on our page before posting it yourself.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

All the best,

Mark Ravi
NCL Commissioner

Results: QLD Youth Ninja Challenge #4

Posted on: August 27th, 2023 by Mark Ravi No Comments

The official results for QLD Youth Ninja Challenge #4 sponsored by OZIGRIP at Mr Ninja HQ on Sunday, 27 August 2023.

Click the image to enlarge.

See how these results have affected the national leaderboard here.

Qualifying athletes will receive their official invitation to the NCL Youth Finals 2023 via email and some of the top runners will be featured on our social media channels.

Logo reveal: NCL Finals 2023

Posted on: August 23rd, 2023 by Mark Ravi No Comments

With the adult season officially over, we’re pleased to officially reveal the official logo for the NCL Finals 2023 being hosted at The Compound Training.

This year’s logo celebrates the top seed in the adult division this year, Melbourne’s own Luke Schmitzer.

Luke earned an enormous 232 points across VIC Adult Ninja Challenge #1 at The Compound Training, VIC Adult Ninja Challenge #2 at Geelong Ninjas and VIC Adult Ninja Challenge #3 at Ninja Nation.

With scoring events from each of our three host facilities in Melbourne, Luke demonstrated impressive adaptability to different surroundings, and we can’t wait to see how far he can go at the NCL Adult Finals 2023 on October 7 & 8 sponsored by OZIGRIP.

The logo was designed by Mark Ravi and illustrated by Sooj Mitton based on a photo taken by Steve Gorak at the NCL Finals 2022.

The logo will appear on all medals awarded at this year’s Finals, as well as serving as the design for the exclusive NCL Finals 2023 t-shirt that each Finals competitor will receive.

REMINDER: If you haven’t updated your preferred t-shirt size in your member profile, you have until 31 August to do so – there are no returns or exchanges on Finals shirts, so check that your size is up to date before the deadline.

As well as running last in all Finals stages and being featured on the logo, Luke has won a $500 cash prize for his performance this season – congratulations once again on an excellent regular season.

The Australian Ninja Open is coming back

Posted on: August 22nd, 2023 by Mark Ravi No Comments

The COVID-19 pandemic was a difficult time for the entire world, and the ninja community was not immune.

It meant leagues like us had to scramble to adjust to constantly changing border statuses and manage a great deal of uncertainty.

For the first time in its history, the NCL did not hold an NCL Finals in 2020 and in 2021 we were forced to hold separate events in each state as we were unable to bring our community together.

One of the rare bright spots for the Ninja Challenge League was the creation of the Australian Ninja Open.

A fresh approach to team ninja competition, it aimed to bring the same level of fairness that most professional team sports seek to achieve in terms of talent distribution.

In other team ninja competitions, a group of elite ninjas who train together could simply team up and the results could be fairly one-sided (has there ever been a stronger collection of talent than the Peninjas circa 2019?).

To address this, we took a common mechanism in team sports and applied it to the sport of ninja: a draft.

Instead of the top ninjas being free to create a “super-team”, the top ninjas would be distributed amongst the teams, yielding combinations of athletes that might never have even trained together, but knew each other by reputation alone.

The original intent of the Australian Ninja Open was to serve as an alternative format to the NCL Finals in 2020, as we were unable to hold qualifiers for much of the year and, as the name suggests, the Australian Ninja Open was open to anyone.

Unfortunately, we were unable to proceed with this original version, but in 2021, with the smallest of field of Finalists in our history due to the closed borders, we incorporated a scaled-back version of the Australian Ninja Open into the NCL Finals 20-21.

It was one of the most fun experiences we’ve had, seeing the drama of a live draft and the bragging rights doled out as teams progressed through each round.

You might be asking, if it was so great, how come you haven’t done it again?

For the past two seasons, our focus has been on re-establishing the momentum we had before the pandemic and re-establishing our core league and NCL Finals as the premier ninja event in the nation.

But with that achieved – participation rates are the highest they’ve ever been in our youth divisions – we are revisiting this exciting format and are working on bringing the original vision of a national field of competitors to life in the future.

Until we can make a formal announcement around this, we wanted to give you a chance to experience the inaugural Australian Ninja Open to get a sense of what the format looks like.

To that end, we have edited the livestream to remove the gaps in the action and present it in a series of four episodes, making it publicly available for free for the first time.

We hope you enjoy and look forward to giving you a chance to participate soon!