Statement from USAN regarding Team Roster Announcement

We, at USA Ninja, are committed to excellence for our athletes and the overall success and growth of our sport.  We acknowledge that unclear communication to our athletes and their families at our Anaheim event led to confusion as it relates to the USA Ninja team selection process for future events. The 2024 ribbon winners from USA Ninja's National Championship event at Anaheim qualified as the inaugural members of USA Ninja's team, and as a result are eligible to be selected to represent USA Ninja at future events, barring age ups, restrictions of a particular event and other selection criteria.

While this information presents as both challenging and sometimes confusing to navigate, USA Ninja communicated with the ribbon winner athletes following the Anaheim event regarding team recognition and the potential for upcoming selection to represent USA Ninja at the World Championship event at Birmingham.

USA Ninja recognized that there would be challenges regarding the athlete selection process for the upcoming World Championship event at Birmingham. Our selection committee had the very difficult task of selecting athletes for a smaller competition field, as specified by World Obstacle, the international host for the Championships. With athletes aging up into new categories, based on the "age on day of race" international criteria, many athletes aged up into the next age category, ranking them against older athletes from those classes. This is just one of several factors that resulted in changing the team makeup dramatically.

USA Ninja is working with World Obstacle, the international federation, to refine the international standards to align with our national standards in order to stabilize team composition between events. In parallel, the US Ninja community is learning the process and intricacies associated with internationally sanctioned competitions at this level and on this road to the Olympics, following many guidelines and protocols that we, in the ninja community, are unfamiliar with.

As we continue to learn and grow as an organization and as a community, USA Ninja remains committed to our athletes and to the success of our sport.