Catholic 'American Ninja Warrior' fighting world hunger, one obstacle at a time
Baron was immediately hooked. He began ninja training in middle school.
'There are two main types of obstacles,' this ninja warrior explained. 'There are upper body obstacles for which you have to use your hands, moving from one grab bar to another. The other type involves obstacles where you have to go back with your feet, balancing and moving through an obstacle to get to the other side.'
Baron said he trains in ninja gyms in Virginia, but has to rely on the rock climbing and bouldering wall at Duncan Student Center when he is back on Notre Dame's campus. There are no ninja gyms nearby.
What makes him so committed to the ninja warrior competition — as opposed to other athletic pursuits and sports, especially those for which Notre Dame is so famous?
'I really fell in love with the ninja warrior community,' he explained. 'There is such respect for others even when they're competing against each other. There's this sense of helping others even while these same competitors are doing their best as well.' Both men and women compete and competitors are from a variety of age groups. And some come from other countries, he added.
Ninja Austin Baron hopes to bring awareness to world hunger crisis
But it's apparently Baron's deeply held commitment to address hunger that provides the real backstory for his participation in the semifinals. That too began years ago in Virginia in the Barons' parish, St. Theresa Catholic Church in Ashburn.
'When I was 12,' he recalls, 'I went to an event at my parish that was providing meals for hungry people, and I learned that these meals that we were packing would be the only food that they'd have to eat!' Austin was stunned.
The event was sponsored by Cross Catholic Outreach, an American organization founded in the U.S. in 2001. It has helped to provide food, access to clean water and housing in more than 90 countries throughout the world. After that eye-opening experience, Baron says, 'I wanted to do something more to help them. I started to fund-raise so that we could send more meals.'
With the help of his family, he started a little business making rope toys for dogs. He said he watched a YouTube video to find out how to do it. Apparently, the family's two dogs — Shamrock and Crash — thought the resulting rope toys were pretty good.
He called his new company 'Knot Perfect.' When he was in high school, he got help from his family, particularly his mother, to make Knot Perfect a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — knotperfect.org. By 2025, entrepreneur Austin Baron had made more than 1,500 dog toys.
According to a June 26, 2025 news release from the University of Notre Dame about Baron's American Ninja Warrior competition, Knot Perfect has already raised over $30,000, providing more than 100,000 meals to children and families around the world. Supporters of his efforts can contribute to Knot Perfect at its website.
But how does this exceptionally committed and altruistic college student hope to inspire others to also work to end world hunger? He admits that many will respond: 'World hunger is too big a problem for me to deal with; what good are my cans of soup and tuna, and a box or two of pasta given at my church every week?'
'What I'm trying to do,' Baron responded, 'is to take something that I love to do — being involved in ANW competitions and making dog toys — and combining it with my mission to feed the hungry. So, that's what I'd suggest to other people. Combine the things that you love to do with your mission. And then, rely on God, knowing that he will be guiding you along the way.'
Baron is heading to the ANW finals after the July 14 semifinals, where he has a chance to win this year's $250,000 prize and the title of 'American Ninja Warrior.'
He's made it very clear that if he wins, his prize money will go to promote that amazing goal — feeding the world's 1 billion hungry people.--OSV News
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
4 hours ago
- The Sun
Zverev vs Khachanov in ATP Toronto semi-finals clash
ALEXANDER Zverev secured his place in the ATP Toronto Masters semi-finals with a gritty 6-7 (8/10), 6-4, 6-3 victory over defending champion Alexei Popyrin. The match, lasting over two and a half hours, saw Zverev recover from a first-set loss to dominate the latter stages. The final game was briefly disrupted by a disruptive fan, leading to a rare double-fault from Zverev before he sealed the win with a sharp volley. 'After losing the first set, I had to remind myself to stay patient,' said Zverev. 'I knew if I kept playing well, the chances would come.' Zverev, now with 40 wins this season, will face Karen Khachanov in the semi-finals. Khachanov defeated American Alex Michelsen 6-4, 7-6 (7/3) in a tightly contested match. 'It was a mental battle,' Khachanov admitted. 'Closing it out in straight sets was crucial.' The head-to-head record favours Zverev, who has won five of their seven previous encounters. Meanwhile, Popyrin remains winless against the German after four meetings. - AFP
New Straits Times
7 hours ago
- New Straits Times
McLaren must also deal with disappointment amid runaway success
LONDON: McLaren boss Zak Brown is preparing to deal with disappointment at the end of the Formula One season, even as the team enjoy one of their most dominant years and a 200th grand prix win at the weekend. As the title battle between Oscar Piastri and teammate Lando Norris heats up, the McLaren pair separated by just nine points after Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix, the American conceded he was thinking also about how to handle the aftermath. Red Bull's reigning champion Max Verstappen, the McLaren drivers' closest rival, is now 97 points off the pace and told reporters at the weekend that he may not win again this year given his car's issues. Even before the weekend, both Piastri and Norris cast caution aside and called it a two-horse race. One of them will surely end the year celebrating a dream come true. The other will rue what might have been, with a new engine era next season shaking everything up again and chances potentially disappearing. Losing always hurts, doubly so when it is to a teammate with the same car, and Brown said McLaren would have to deal with the situation sensitively when – although he still insisted on saying if – the time came. "Eventually... we'll just sit down and actually have a conversation and go 'right, one of you is going to win and it's going to be the best day of your life. One of you is going to lose. How do you want us to handle that?'," he told a select group of reporters. "We'll actually sit down and go 'Right, you want us to jump up and down and celebrate? This guy won'. So we're fully aware and sensitive to 'how do you celebrate that situation?'." Australian Piastri has won six races to Norris's five but the Briton has momentum going into the August break, with three wins from his last four starts. The pair have had seven one-two finishes from 14 races, including the last four, and have left rivals trailing. McLaren are so far ahead in the constructors' standings – 299 points over Ferrari – that the crown is a given. Much has been made of the potential for a falling out between friends, for clashes on track given what is at stake, but Brown was sanguine and said the relationship was only growing stronger. When Norris ran into the back of Piastri as he challenged for the lead in Canada in June, the Briton defused the situation by immediately taking responsibility. Piastri locked up behind Norris in Hungary on Sunday, in what could have been a repeat of that Montreal accident, but no contact was made. Brown said there was no 'elephant in the room' at McLaren, with the drivers having complete transparency on strategy and how the team go about racing, and he expected more close calls in future. "There's competitiveness brewing... as the championship builds, I'm sure that tension will grow," said the boss. "We're fully anticipating them 'swapping paint' again at some point, I'm very confident it won't be deliberate, which is where you then get into the problems. "They will have racing incidents in their further time here at McLaren, we know that and they know that, so we're not afraid of that. "I'm positive they're never going to run each other off the track, and that's where you get into bad blood. So they're free to race... there are rules around our racing, which is respect your teammate, they know that." - Reuters
New Straits Times
7 hours ago
- New Straits Times
Cooper Lutkenhaus, 16, to become youngest American ever at track and field worlds
By EUGENE: At just 16, Cooper Lutkenhaus is set to become the youngest American ever to compete at the World Track and Field Championships, which take place next month at Tokyo. Lutkenhaus, a rising junior at Northwest High School in Justin, Texas, placed second in the 800-meter final at the USA Track and Field Championships on Sunday at Eugene, Ore., with a time of 1:42:27. Donovan Brazier of Grand Rapids, Mich., won the event. Lutkenhaus' time smashed the previous U18 world record – set by Kenya's Timothy Kitum in the 2012 Olympics – by 1.1 seconds. It is also the fourth- fastest time by any U.S. man and 18th-fastest in the world. Less than a year ago, Lutkenhaus' time would have been the American record. The current record holder for youngest American at the World Track and Field Championships is Mary Cain, who was 17 years and 3 months old in 2013. Erriyon Knighton holds the record for youngest American man at 18 years and 5 months. Lutkenhaus, who is scheduled to begin his junior year of high school in just over a week, doesn't turn 17 until December. "I'll be missing some school," Lutkenhaus said, according to NBC Sports. "But hopefully the teachers will understand." - Reuters
