Minnesotan Competing on this Season of ‘Survivor’

Minnesota will once again be represented this season on CBS's long-running realty competition show, Survivor.

Survivor is set to kick-off its 35th season (can you believe it's really been on for 17 years?!?) next week, and Minnesota's own Katrina Radke is set to compete for that grand prize of one million dollars.

While it doesn't quite generate the excitement it did during its first few seasons, Survivor always does respectable in the TV ratings. So, I think it's always cool to see a fellow Minnesotan compete.

(It's not quite as cool as when a Minnesotan competes on American Idol or The Voice, where they then show scenes of our home state when the contestant comes back for a performance, but still...)

According to the Inside Survivor website, Katrina is 46 years old and is a former Olympian (?!?) swimmer (she competed in the 1988 Summer Olympic Games in Seoul) who these days works as a "sports psychologist, therapist and professor at California's Foothill College."

Whoa. I thought she was from Minnesota? Well, the site says her home is here in Excelsior, and that she's originally from Morris. But the college where she's a professor is in Palo Alto, California (located just south of San Francisco). And that's quite the commute from Minnesota, isn't it?  (Maybe it's on online school...)

Either way, it'll be cool to see what kind of contestant Katrina turns out to be on this season of 'Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers' on Survivor 35 (I'm gonna guess she'll be one of the 'healers'). It premieres next Wednesday, September 20, on CBS.