A Seaford ninja warrior

It’s just an ordinary day at the Shortis residence in Seaford. The sound of an Elmo doll rings in the background, while a set of twins, Jack and James, play with each other on the floor. Mrs. Shortis is coddling her infant, MacKenna, and clears the living room filled with an array of blocks, trampolines and action figures. It’s everything you would expect to see in a full family house: everything except for the makeshift obstacle course in the corner of the den.

“Oh, that’s just a little game we play with the boys, so they can understand what I do,” Mr. Shortis said. “I’m a ninja warrior.”

Matthew Shortis, 29, was just one of the thousands of contestants who applied to be on the seventh season of “American Ninja Warrior.” The competition was a special summer edition on NBC, with a timed obstacle course, jam-packed with physically enduring elements, such as a 14-foot half pipe called the “warped wall,” and snake-shaped moving beams, used to test balance.

There were more than 50,000 submissions for the competition this past summer and only 300 people from each region of the United States were chosen for the show. Shortis, originally born in West Hempstead, competed in the Pittsburgh city qualifier back in May.

“It’s like the adult version of ‘don’t step on the lava,’” Shortis said. “The hardest obstacle wasn’t the one I fell off of. ‘Snake crossing,’ was the hardest because that was the one you could control the least. Balance is tricky, but everything else you can control in your training.”

After camping out over night in Pittsburgh, Shortis was nervous to compete. With little to no sleep, and the weather reaching down below 40 degrees at night, Shortis said he didn’t feel like such a warrior.

Shortis made it four obstacles into the course, before falling off the “wind chimes,” a row of tubes that resemble large-scale wind chimes and force contestants to use upper-body and grip strength to climb horizontally across. He was ranked just below the 30 contestants who made it through to the next round, so he did not qualify for the show.