From physician to New Jersey ninja

Trina Lisko has always taken to athletics. Growing up, she tagged along with her two older brothers to play soccer until the sun set, and made sure to try everything from street hockey to water sports.

But the former Bishop Eustace Prep field hockey star and alumna of Duke University, where she captained the hockey team in her senior year, did not want her athletic career to end with school.

Now 37, the mother of two young children, and a physician specializing in sports medicine, the Collingswood resident recently gravitated to Parkour, an obstacle-course training regime.

That, in turn, has led to an unexpected star turn for her - on TV's American Ninja Warrior reality show.

She will be featured on the June 22 episode of the NBC show. Now in its seventh season, the show airs locally Mondays at 8 p.m. The episode with Lisko was taped last month in Pittsburgh, but how she fared in the Northeast regional qualifiers will be revealed only when it is broadcast.

Lisko says she had not even heard of the show a year and a half ago. But as she immersed herself in Parkour, one thing led to another, and she found herself picked to participate on the national television show, which prides itself on being the ultimate test of endurance, conditioning, balance, and upper-body and grip strength.

Parkour has rekindled her flickering passion for athletics, she said.

"I really loved to play sports," Lisko said. "I think that little extra [passion] is kind of what made me want to continue in the college level."

She continued running and working out after her dominant field hockey career ended. But a few years ago, she began to feel she was in a running-workout rut. The same running routine over and over was failing to give her the adrenaline rush that sports had once given her.

About a year and a half ago, she began taking her sons, 9-year-old Andrew and 7-year-old T.J., to the new Pinnacle Parkour Academy in Cherry Hill, hoping to involve them in a high-energy activity.

After about two months of watching her boys at the Parkour gym, she decided to join adult classes. "Parkour came into my life at just the right time," Lisko said. "I like obstacle-course racing, I loved the Tough Mudders that I had done, but I didn't realize that there was a version of that you could do on a regular basis."

Lisko said she pushes herself to the extreme to be a good example for her children and to her patients. "I can't ask my patients to live a healthy lifestyle or work hard if I'm not living that same lifestyle that I'm trying to teach them to live," Lisko said.

"You have to push yourself further and try new things and try new experiences just to continue growing as a person," she said. "I can't ask my boys to try new things and open up themselves to new events if I don't do the same thing."

She trains about three days a week at the gym while her children are in classes, so Parkour is a family thing.

Lisko has been training with one of the gym's owners, Jamie Rahn, better known as "Captain NBC" on Ninja Warrior, where he competes with green hair and superhero body paint.

With Rahn's help, Lisko was thrust into the Ninja Warrior community alongside classmates, five of whom have participated or will also participate on the show.

And with that, Lisko rediscovered the adrenaline spark she was looking for to reinvigorate her love of sports - a new challenge and a team to support her.

"There's a lot of people who train together and push each other and are there when someone falls," Lisko said of her training partners. "You really are a part of that team environment again, and that trust and that support system is always there."

It's an environment Lisko was accustomed to when for four years she took control of the field for the Bishop Eustace Crusaders as a defensive-minded center midfielder under South Jersey field hockey legend coach Jeanne Kline.

In turn, Lisko, whose work at the South Jersey Sports Medicine Center in Cherry Hill involves rehabilitation, nonoperative spine care, and pain management, helps her training partners with medical advice and lights up the gym with her determination, according to Rahn.

"She's definitely a hard worker, pushes hard," Rahn said. "She's super-helpful and definitely super-dedicated."

Lisko's chief advice: "Work hard, play hard, and don't be afraid to try new things."