Savannah Serio has always been a climber.
“She’s been climbing forever, whether it was chain link fences or stuff around the house,” her dad, Sonny Serio, told the Landmark.
He said he and his wife, Marissa Serio, enrolled Savannah at the Flipside Academy of Movement in North Riverside at just 3 years old, and she started competing once she turned 6.
“I started by climbing doorframes, and I got put in a little tumblers class,” Savannah said. “A couple of years later, the owner of that gym asked if I wanted to be on his competition team.”
Now, the 12-year-old North Riverside resident is set to represent the United States in the Obstacle Course Racing World Championships in Limerick, Ireland, from Thursday, Aug. 6, to Sunday, Aug. 9.
Typical courses involve multiple obstacles for competitors to traverse using their strength and speed, like those seen on the television show “American Ninja Warrior.” Savannah said her favorite obstacle is called “battering” and involves using a bent bar to jump between anchor-shaped elements hanging from above.
Savannah is one of five members on her youth team that’s competing in Ireland. The other members are Jeremy Lauff, 16, from Naperville, Anthony Battaglia, 17, from Warrenville, Claire Mattern, 11, from Naperville and Henry Mihajlovic, 11, from Libertyville.
She met the team through Big Time Ninja, the obstacle gym she now attends in Bolingbrook, where she said she transferred after Flipside closed.
“When I was at Flipside, I had a lot of people from that gym who I competed with, and they’re actually my two best friends. It’s so much fun to train with the coaches. I’ve been there for [competitions] and it’s nice to get to know them,” she said. “Once Flipside closed down, all the other teammates came there [to Big Time Ninja], so it’s nice that I still have my Flipside friends at Big Time. It’s so much fun to exercise and train there.”
Savannah said she was excited when representatives reached out to ask her to compete in the World Championships and represent the country internationally.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” she said. “This year, it’s one of the biggest teams that they’ve had, and I have a lot of friends on it, so it’s pretty cool.”
Sonny Serio said he still hasn’t processed that his daughter is competing internationally at her young age.
“My wife and I have both been watching her do this stuff since she was a little kid, and I still shake my head at the stuff that [has happened],” he said. “I have all the faith in the world in her, in her talent and her work ethic and her ability, but I’m still blown away watching her. In so far as going to Ireland, Team USA, like she said, it’s not something that was ever on our radar. When you see that, and you get that call, it still hasn’t completely sunk in.”
He said the ninja community has opened up and embraced his daughter.
“Everybody’s racing against each other, but one kid will come off the course and immediately go to the kid who’s running next or two or three down the line and say, ‘Hey, that obstacle over there is tricky. I got messed up, but if you do this, you’re probably going to get through it,’” Serio said. “It’s a very wide-open community. It’s unlike anything that we’ve been around in sports.”
To other kids whose interests are piqued by the idea of obstacle course racing, Savannah said to give it a try.
“I know I tried every sport before I found this. I tried football, baseball, soccer, basketball. I tried everything, and I didn’t stick with any of it. I’d always be asking my dad, ‘How much longer? Is it almost over?’” she said. “It’s a lot of fun to get to move around after school, sitting for eight, nine hours. I get to go hang out with some of my closer friends, and it’s so much fun.”
