(CNN) — The premise sounds almost fictional: one boy and one girl from every state, territory and some tribal nations, flown to a private campus in Ohio to compete in a televised athletic contest called the Patriot Games — a Trump-backed youth competition with obstacle courses, patriotic testimonials and inevitable comparisons to The Hunger Games.
Except unlike the dystopian book and movie franchise where kids are pitted in a televised battle of survival, the stakes in the Patriot Games won’t be life and death. The male and female winners will each receive $125,000 in college scholarship money.
For 16-year-old Tylee Herrmann, the pitch was simple. In her video application, she gave her age, her school in Arizona and her reason for wanting to compete: she wanted to help “bring patriotism back to the US.”
“I feel like a lot of times right now, we feel disunified,” Herrmann, the Cherokee Nation representative, said in an interview with CNN. “I think we need something to bring us all together, because we’re the United States of America, and we need to be a little more united.”
However, Herrmann says she’s already experiencing how controversial the Patriot Games can be.
“There’s definitely been a number of people that just stopped talking to me,” said Herrmann, referring to her decision to compete in the games.
“I have a significant number of people that I know say that they hate the country because they hate the government,” Herrmann said, adding that “patriotism doesn’t belong to a political party.”
Hear more from the contestants on the latest episode of CNN’s ‘One Thing’ podcast.
Streaming live over the weekend on ESPN with a primetime special airing on ABC Aug. 13, the Patriot Games are the latest example of the Trump administration elevating the politics of athleticism and toughness in celebration of America’s 250th birthday.
They come amid a long summer of spectacles put on by Freedom 250, the President Donald Trump-backed group that organized the UFC fight night on the White House lawn featuring a military flyover, plus the Great American State Fair on the National Mall and the immense July 4th fireworks display in Washington, DC.
Last year, Trump vowed that the games would feature “the greatest high school athletes.” However, the event appears to be shaping up to be more of a highly produced display of youth patriotism than athletic excellence.
CNN interviewed five Patriot Games competitors and reviewed numerous application videos posted online to YouTube and other platforms that showed students showing off skills such as backflips and parkour training.
Yet, athletic ability wasn’t the sole factor considered for participation in the competition, and those selected appear to have largely similar backgrounds. Contestants were asked to film a video answering a series of prompts about why they wanted to compete and to explain how sports have shaped their identity. They were also asked to list places outside their home state where they had a “meaningful personal, family, cultural, military, or community connection,” according to the application.
Applicants were required to list their biological sex. When announcing the games last year, Trump pledged that at the games, “there will be no men playing in women’s sports.”
Contestants ages 14 to 17 include children of active-duty military and JROTC participants, as well as homeschooled students. Of the kids featured in the Freedom 250 Instagram page, many attend private Christian schools. They also appear to be overwhelmingly White; the application for the Games did not ask to specify race.
Some students were chosen to represent states where they don’t reside. The pick for Puerto Rico is a young man from Texas. New Jersey’s ambassador attends a private Christian school in Texas. The female competitor for Massachusetts, 16-year-old Bobbi Vickers, attends school in California.
Vickers said she was initially surprised not to be representing California.
“I get a bunch of questions like, why are you representing Massachusetts and not your home state?” she told CNN. “But I think it’s really cool because a lot of my family is from there and my favorite basketball team is actually the Boston Celtics.”
Herrmann said she applied as both an Arizonan and as a citizen of the Cherokee tribe. She said the Freedom 250 organizers did a background check and verified with the Cherokee tribe that she’s a member.
In videos posted to Instagram, many of the competitors touted their Christian faith and thanked Trump personally for the opportunity, while others have posted about their interest in athletic pursuits like basketball, lacrosse or weightlifting at the gym.
One student representing North Carolina is a member of a local chapter of Club America, a high school program launched by Turning Point USA – the organization founded by the late activist Charlie Kirk. In an interview with conservative YouTube personality Adam Francisco, the student was asked about WNBA player Sophie Cunningham’s comments about barring transgender women from women’s sports. The video, posted to Instagram, was captioned, “High school athletes get it, why doesn’t the left?”
Freedom 250 spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez touted the games as a celebration of “America’s next generation of leaders, competitors and champions” in a statement. “Freedom 250 is proud to bring Americans together through unforgettable signature events — from the Freedom Trucks and July 4 celebrations to the 2026 Patriot Games — that celebrate our country and inspire the next generation.”
Trump’s affinity for sports
Trump first teased the Patriot Games during his bid for a second term in 2023. In a campaign video, he outlined plans for America’s 250th birthday and declared that “major sporting contests for high school athletes” would allow young people from “every state to show off the best of American skill, sportsmanship, and competitive spirit.”
Sports have featured heavily in Trump’s second term. He became the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl in person in 2025, and has appeared at the NBA finals, US Open, Daytona 500, and the World Cup Final. Trump was also instrumental in expediting plans for the Freedom 250 IndyCar street race in downtown Washington, DC, later this month.
“He has done more than any president that I can think of to try to graft sports onto his own identity,” said Michael L. Butterworth, director of the Center for Sports Communication & Media at The University of Texas at Austin.
The games are set to take place at the SPIRE Academy, a boarding school and sports training facility in Geneva, Ohio, which hosted a Trump campaign rally in 2016. According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and the Freedom 250 Instagram account, Trump plans on visiting the games’ finale on Tuesday. They are one of two contests backed by the administration aimed at promoting patriotism in young Americans – a demographic that has largely soured on Trump and the country. According to a June 2026 Gallup poll, just 14% of adults aged 18 to 34 said they were “extremely proud” to be an American.
The first contest was the Presidential 1776 Award in June, where high-school aged finalists answered questions about American history and government for a chance to win a scholarship worth up to $150,000. The broadcast drew 1.63 million live viewers on CBS, the Department of Education said last month.
But that contest has since become mired in controversy.
The family of Aangad Singh, a 15-year-old from Connecticut has publicly cast doubt on the results, telling NOTUS last month they believe some of his answers were incorrectly scored and that he should have been one of the three winners. Along with Democratic lawmakers from the House and Senate, they’ve asked the Education Department to provide more information about the scoring.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy released a video last week where he alleged that Singh, who is the son of Indian immigrants, was sidelined to uplift contestants who better aligned with Trump’s agenda. All three of the finalists were White, and one identified as a Trump supporter in an interview with CNN.
“How do you justify running a merit-based competition based upon how much you know about American history, and then denying a kid a place in the winner’s circle, perhaps simply because his parents are immigrants,” Murphy asked.
In a statement to CNN, the Education Department said that all contestants had agreed that judges — fellows from the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation — “would judge the competition in good faith with full discretion over scoring.”
“They also understood that in the live competition, the judges would have to exercise their best judgment and deliberate in real time. It was a fierce and close competition, and Mr. Singh was an outstanding competitor,” the agency said.
‘That’s kind of a gamble for me’
Competitors for the Patriot Games were told that there would be a points-based system, awarding athletes who finish with the best marks in each round the most. Some of the students who spoke to CNN expressed confusion about how individuals would be scored during the team events, such as dodgeball.
“I don’t know how that’s going to work, that’s kind of a gamble for me,” said 17-year-old Liam Nies from Ohio. “No two teams are equal, so it’s really if you get the better team or you don’t.”
In an interview with CNN, Nies said that he heard about the Patriot Games from “Granny Bibbins,” Instagram influencer Arleta Kay Didier, who promotes traditional values and says in her bio that she’s hoping to “inspire the next generation of Moms.”
Tatum Palmer from Oregon told CNN she also learned of the games from Didier, while Missouri’s Madison Glise said she was encouraged to apply by her mother, a member of the Air Force, after everyone at her military base received an email about them.
Part of Nies’s application was showing off his ability to do a backflip – he does one a day and posts a video on Instagram about it. He spent much of his childhood living in Belgium before moving back to the US for middle school.
He said his perception of America as a kid in Belgium was “big cowboys everywhere and just hillbillies.” Now, “I have a different view on America,” Nies said. “I think I’m just more noticeable of the opportunities that we have here.”
Dozens of video applications posted to YouTube show various reasons why young people wanted to participate. An applicant from South Carolina detailed her experience as a stage 4 cancer survivor and her love for swimming and track. A New York track and volleyball athlete said he wanted to ease college tuition costs for himself and his twin brother. A 14-year-old, wearing a black “Freedom” t-shirt popularized by Kirk, said he wanted to participate to “show everyone why Oklahoma is the real red state.”
For Herrmann, the games could help her go to her dream school: Liberty University, an evangelical Christian school in Lynchburg, Virginia. She wants to get her master’s in business by the time she turns 20. Her goal is to work in government one day – maybe even an elected position like a congressman or a senator.
“If it happens, I would love to be the president,” she said.
CNN’s David Rind contributed to this report.
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