10th Ultimate Zelie Challenge promotes access to obstacle courses, raising money for park
Zac Baker wanted to share his passion for a sport unfamiliar to most.
For the 10th consecutive year, he was able to do so with the Ultimate Zelie Challenge, an obstacle course event held at Zelienople Community Park this past week.
The camp was held Monday through Friday. The Ultimate Zelie Challenge is Sunday; registration begins at 9 a.m., with races starting at 9:30 (ages 4-8), 10:30 (ages 9-14) and noon (ages 15 and older).
“The original vision for the event and the camp was (that) I was just a kid that fell in love with American Ninja Warrior and obstacle course racing,” Baker said. “There really wasn’t any gyms or local competitions for me to do at that time at all.”
Baker said training for ninja warrior-style obstacle courses isn’t always cheap or accessible for kids to come across. If a gym isn’t available to train at, there are other ways to get involved.
“They can almost always find a local playground,” Baker said. “The goal was to design obstacle courses, design obstacles and design training methods all based off of your local playground.”
Zelienople Community Park houses multiple playground structures able to be used for different courses. Baker said obstacles will include running up slides, swinging on monkey bars and climbing ladders and the sides of bridges.
“We bring in our own obstacles like hurdles,” Baker said. “We’ll bring in see-saws. This year, to make it more similar to Spartan, we’ll have some weight-related obstacles.”
Baker said proceeds from the event will go back to Zelienople Community Park to further develop the playgrounds.
“I’m looking forward to how the community and people react to any new things that we may do — different courses and different obstacles that we bring in,” Baker said beforehand.
