A local teen is representing New Mexico on a national stage – she is competing on season 16 of “American Ninja Warrior.”
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A local teen is representing New Mexico on a national stage – she is competing on season 16 of “American Ninja Warrior.”
Out of a pool of 75,000 people who applied to be on the show, 19-year-old Ixchel Valentino was one of over 100 selected to actually compete.
Valentino calls herself “the Nerdy Ninja.” When she’s not hanging, flying, or doing flips while training at Ninja Force Gym, she spends time with robots.
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“I’ve been competing in robotics since I was five years old,” she said. “Doing anything and everything from programming to building to promoting our teams.”
Valentino says competing in both events are pretty similar.
“Competing in both athletics and academics, I’ve found that the mindset for both aspects of, I guess nerdy and athletic is very, very common. You have to find that middle ground for your mindset to be able to get in the game mode, you have to block out all the distractions and stay super focused,” she said.
For Valentino, the sky is the limit – even when you have a fear of heights.
“I have like this fight or flight kind of reflex. And I’m so scared. I just, I want to, like, crawl back down,” she said.
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She uses that fear as fuel.
“I can use that fight or flight as fuel. I can use it as more energy to compete. And it kind of pushes me to do things that I wouldn’t normally be comfortable doing if it wasn’t in a competition setting,” Valentino said.
She’s hoping to beat the odds, no matter how stacked they are.
“Trying to get on from that 75,000 pool, I guess you get a 0.26% chance of getting on. That is like crazy,” Valentino said.
More moisture will be moving into New Mexico through the weekend. Afternoon rain and thunderstorm chances will then increase into early next week.
Drier air moved in to end the week. A few isolated showers and storms still developed though, mainly in western New Mexico. Rain has ended tonight, but a backdoor cold front will be moving into northeastern New Mexico. This front will increase the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, and bring upslope flow along the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. That could lead to heavy rainfall over the mountains Saturday afternoon. More showers and thunderstorms will develop across the state Saturday with more monsoon moisture moving in. Locally heavy rainfall will again be possible, with Flood Watches in effect for burn scar areas.
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Even more monsoon moisture moves in Sunday and Monday, and this will bring increasing rain chances through Monday afternoon. Once again, storms will be capable of heavy rainfall each day, so flash flooding will be possible. More storms will continue into Wednesday, with the heaviest of the rain falling in western and northern parts of New Mexico. The southeast part of the state will stay the driest and hottest.
Drier weather moves in for almost all of New Mexico for the Fourth of July. However, another surge of monsoon moisture will likely move in on that Friday, bringing back scattered afternoon storm chances.
The Garcia Subaru Pet Pics segment highlights New Mexico Living viewers’ pets. Friday’s pet of the day is Twiggs. She is an 8-month-old foster fail who was adopted from Watermelon Mountain Ranch in January by Jessica Morning. Twiggs was named for her love of sticks. She spends her days getting into things she shouldn’t, annoying her three rescue siblings, and barking at things that are not there.
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Drier air will move in but it will still be relatively muggy and warm. See the latest conditions at KOB.com/Weather.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Drier air will move in Friday but it will still be hot and relatively muggy with some spotty storms and partly cloudy conditions.
Temperatures will reach the triple digits in southern New Mexico, except for Ruidoso and Silver City. The Four Corners will see 80s and 90s. Red River will get to around 75° in the northern mountains.
A greater chance of storms is coming this weekend.
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Meteorologist Kira Miner shares all the details in her full forecast in the video above.
