Post by amplify26 on Sept 13, 2022 23:53:31 GMT -5
I was skimming through the archives, and found this article at the time Tehachapi premiered. Thinking I might post it here lest it goes missing.
Hardy boy
Sellwood teenager pushes himself to the limit on ‘Survivor’-type show
By STEVE BRANDON Issue date: Fri, Sep 30, 2005
The Tribune
The casting call was for a part in “the adventure of a lifetime” and some sort of competition “at an exotic location.”
“Sounds like fun,” thought Isaac Hainley, then a freshman at Central Catholic High.
Hainley auditioned in Portland last spring, as did thousands of youngsters in cities around the country. A few months later, he was picked to be one of 10 boys and 10 girls on “Endurance: Tehachapi,” a TV reality series that is a tamer, youth takeoff of the hit show “Survivor.”
“It was probably the most mentally and physically challenging thing I’ve ever done. I’ve never worked or pushed myself so hard,” Hainley says. “And it was so much fun, I didn’t want to leave.”
The first of 14 weekly episodes will be shown at 10:30 a.m. Saturday on KGW (8) as part of the Discovery Kids on NBC morning lineup.
The winning team gets a trip to Costa Rica. Results haven’t been released, and contestants aren’t allowed to say. But Hainley, now a 15-year-old Central Catholic sophomore, seems pleased with his performance in the 105-degree heat and among the rattlesnakes in the Tehachapi Mountains north of Los Angeles and near the Mojave Desert.
“It was intense. And the pressure — I really wanted to come back and have people say, ‘You did all right,’ ” he says.
Hainley spent a couple of weeks in July at the remote location. The role took him away from swim teaching duties at Sellwood Pool, a few blocks from his house.
The youngest of Matt and June Hainley’s three children, he’s a straight-A student taking honors classes. He’s an active guy — 5-11, 170 pounds — who hopes to play tennis and compete in swimming for Central Catholic. He’s also played a little baseball, basketball, football and soccer, and umpired youth baseball.
But his main interest might be music. He plays drums in both the Central jazz band and in an alternative-funk-jazz band with friends Colin Rupp (younger brother of star distance runner Galen Rupp) and Nick Beyer. He also plays piano and guitar.
When it comes to being outdoors, he loves skateboarding, snowboarding, bouncing on a trampoline, bike riding and “running around the neighborhood.” He and his friends have been known to visit Sellwood Park “and climb up big trees and swing from the branches.”
June Hainley wasn’t surprised that Isaac went for it the way he did during tryouts for the show.
“He lives as if nobody’s watching,” she says. “He’s never been shy.”
Getting picked was the first hurdle. After making an initial cut, Hainley had to make a 3 1/2-minute video for the talent scouts. Knowing by then what the show was all about, he decided that “the only way I’d get in was if I stood out.”
So, on his video, which took him 12 hours to create, “I was really loud and excited. I did things on my skateboard, introduced myself and then went kind of crazy on my trampoline, doing back flips and all. And I played a drum solo. In other words, I didn’t say, ‘Every day I sit at home and read a book.’ ”
He got the part.
“The minute I got accepted, my mom started getting me to go for runs and do sit-ups and push-ups every day,” he says.
Hainley says he wasn’t worried about what he had gotten himself into.
“We’re all kids — they can’t not feed you,” he says.
The kids, however, did have to go without their cell phones, iPods, computers, TVs, radios and anything else they could have used to communicate with the outside world.
The parents, meanwhile, spent the weeks at a luxury hotel in the L.A. area, enjoying the shuttle to Manhattan Beach and receiving daily reports on how their children, now divided into teams of one boy and one girl, were faring.
According to Discovery Kids, the competitors had to “tap into every ounce of muscle and brainpower they have. … With the end goal of collecting 13 pyramid pieces of Endurance, the kids compete in a series of innovative and intense games that have them hanging on to a T-bar on a 40-foot zipline over water and pulling a weighted raft across a lake, among other challenges.”
Hainley describes it as “half quick thinking and half a combination of speed and strength.”
A key, he says, was who you could trust and work well with his or her partner. “My partner was very good,” he says.
The first test was hanging on to the T-bar. The first three boys and girls who fell into the water were eliminated, leaving seven of each for the remainder of the show, so the pressure was extraordinary.
“I remember thinking, ‘If I let go, I will never forgive myself,’ ” Hainley says, “so I’m going to hang on till I die.”
Hainley plans to have his friends over Saturday for a barbecue during the show. He has not seen any of the episodes.
“For the next couple of months, I’m not going to be able to sleep on Friday nights,” he says.
He says he came back to Portland thinking of his fellow competitors as “great friends.” The youngsters exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers, and “I got really close to two or three of them,” he says. “We all want to get together and have a reunion.”
He also wants to go back to the Tehachapi Mountains.
“I miss it so much,” he says. “It was such a beautiful place.”
He’s not sure where he wants to go to college, or what he wants to do when he he gets older — music, photography and TV or movie production are possibilities — but he does hope to reap something tangible out of his appearances on national television.
“I don’t plan on being a huge actor,” he says, “but hopefully this gets me a commercial.”
From the Portland Tribune
Hardy boy
Sellwood teenager pushes himself to the limit on ‘Survivor’-type show
By STEVE BRANDON Issue date: Fri, Sep 30, 2005
The Tribune
The casting call was for a part in “the adventure of a lifetime” and some sort of competition “at an exotic location.”
“Sounds like fun,” thought Isaac Hainley, then a freshman at Central Catholic High.
Hainley auditioned in Portland last spring, as did thousands of youngsters in cities around the country. A few months later, he was picked to be one of 10 boys and 10 girls on “Endurance: Tehachapi,” a TV reality series that is a tamer, youth takeoff of the hit show “Survivor.”
“It was probably the most mentally and physically challenging thing I’ve ever done. I’ve never worked or pushed myself so hard,” Hainley says. “And it was so much fun, I didn’t want to leave.”
The first of 14 weekly episodes will be shown at 10:30 a.m. Saturday on KGW (8) as part of the Discovery Kids on NBC morning lineup.
The winning team gets a trip to Costa Rica. Results haven’t been released, and contestants aren’t allowed to say. But Hainley, now a 15-year-old Central Catholic sophomore, seems pleased with his performance in the 105-degree heat and among the rattlesnakes in the Tehachapi Mountains north of Los Angeles and near the Mojave Desert.
“It was intense. And the pressure — I really wanted to come back and have people say, ‘You did all right,’ ” he says.
Hainley spent a couple of weeks in July at the remote location. The role took him away from swim teaching duties at Sellwood Pool, a few blocks from his house.
The youngest of Matt and June Hainley’s three children, he’s a straight-A student taking honors classes. He’s an active guy — 5-11, 170 pounds — who hopes to play tennis and compete in swimming for Central Catholic. He’s also played a little baseball, basketball, football and soccer, and umpired youth baseball.
But his main interest might be music. He plays drums in both the Central jazz band and in an alternative-funk-jazz band with friends Colin Rupp (younger brother of star distance runner Galen Rupp) and Nick Beyer. He also plays piano and guitar.
When it comes to being outdoors, he loves skateboarding, snowboarding, bouncing on a trampoline, bike riding and “running around the neighborhood.” He and his friends have been known to visit Sellwood Park “and climb up big trees and swing from the branches.”
June Hainley wasn’t surprised that Isaac went for it the way he did during tryouts for the show.
“He lives as if nobody’s watching,” she says. “He’s never been shy.”
Getting picked was the first hurdle. After making an initial cut, Hainley had to make a 3 1/2-minute video for the talent scouts. Knowing by then what the show was all about, he decided that “the only way I’d get in was if I stood out.”
So, on his video, which took him 12 hours to create, “I was really loud and excited. I did things on my skateboard, introduced myself and then went kind of crazy on my trampoline, doing back flips and all. And I played a drum solo. In other words, I didn’t say, ‘Every day I sit at home and read a book.’ ”
He got the part.
“The minute I got accepted, my mom started getting me to go for runs and do sit-ups and push-ups every day,” he says.
Hainley says he wasn’t worried about what he had gotten himself into.
“We’re all kids — they can’t not feed you,” he says.
The kids, however, did have to go without their cell phones, iPods, computers, TVs, radios and anything else they could have used to communicate with the outside world.
The parents, meanwhile, spent the weeks at a luxury hotel in the L.A. area, enjoying the shuttle to Manhattan Beach and receiving daily reports on how their children, now divided into teams of one boy and one girl, were faring.
According to Discovery Kids, the competitors had to “tap into every ounce of muscle and brainpower they have. … With the end goal of collecting 13 pyramid pieces of Endurance, the kids compete in a series of innovative and intense games that have them hanging on to a T-bar on a 40-foot zipline over water and pulling a weighted raft across a lake, among other challenges.”
Hainley describes it as “half quick thinking and half a combination of speed and strength.”
A key, he says, was who you could trust and work well with his or her partner. “My partner was very good,” he says.
The first test was hanging on to the T-bar. The first three boys and girls who fell into the water were eliminated, leaving seven of each for the remainder of the show, so the pressure was extraordinary.
“I remember thinking, ‘If I let go, I will never forgive myself,’ ” Hainley says, “so I’m going to hang on till I die.”
Hainley plans to have his friends over Saturday for a barbecue during the show. He has not seen any of the episodes.
“For the next couple of months, I’m not going to be able to sleep on Friday nights,” he says.
He says he came back to Portland thinking of his fellow competitors as “great friends.” The youngsters exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers, and “I got really close to two or three of them,” he says. “We all want to get together and have a reunion.”
He also wants to go back to the Tehachapi Mountains.
“I miss it so much,” he says. “It was such a beautiful place.”
He’s not sure where he wants to go to college, or what he wants to do when he he gets older — music, photography and TV or movie production are possibilities — but he does hope to reap something tangible out of his appearances on national television.
“I don’t plan on being a huge actor,” he says, “but hopefully this gets me a commercial.”
From the Portland Tribune