Local ‘American Ninja Warrior’ competes

Just a little over a year ago, American Ninja Warrior competitor and Pass Christian resident Jeremiah Morgan was clinically dead. Tonight, he competes on a new episode of the show on NBC.

What started out as a family camping trip quickly turned into a nightmare for the Morgan family in 2017. While stringing up lights using a metal cable, Jeremiah Morgan found himself on the ground wrapped in the cable, getting electrocuted the entire time.

Jeremiah went into cardiac arrest six times before AMR could respond and was clinically dead. He was medically induced into a coma. A year later, the American Ninja Warrior competitor says competing since then has meant a little more. “Before whenever I competed on the show, it was mostly about success, about the ability to either do well or put on a ‘show.’ Now it’s turned into more of just a joy to be able to do what I do. It’s just a joy to be able to wake up next to my wife, to wake up and hug my kids.”

The 28-year-old has two children and is a music minister at the River of Life Tabernacle. Jeremiah began his journey on American Ninja Warrior with his dad and brother five years ago. He made his first appearance on season six. Since then, to train, he’s made his own gym and hand-built the obstacles found in the show. “The only way to train for American Ninja Warrior is to make the obstacles yourself. It’s really a totally different world on the show. You’re facing obstacles that you’ve never seen before, things that you’ve never tried before so you really have to think outside the box with your training.”

The show is designed to take your muscles to complete failure. Once a week, Jeremiah trains in the gym to do just that. One obstacle replicates the daunting wing nuts found in the Vegas finals. Each ring is over 10 feet apart. “Everything that you see on the show, all those wild obstacles, the salmon ladder, the warp wall, a lot of these larger than life obstacles we try to build inside the gym ourselves.”

Jeremiah competes tonight at 7 p.m. on ‘American Ninja Warrior’ in the Dallas City finals.