With basketball, baseball and hockey out of the picture during the pandemic, TV is left with few options for sports programming that don’t involve documentaries.

Enter Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s “The Titan Games."

The athletic competition returns for a second season on NBC with a two-hour season premiere that airs at 8 p.m. ET Monday, May 25.

"We are all in the need to get some sports back into our lives,” Johnson says in a promo for the show, which debuted in 2019.

With its big arena obstacles, “The Titan Games" is often reminiscent of “American Gladiators” and “American Ninja Warrior," except it boasts The Rock, the show’s creator and host, as the towering giant at the center of all the action. Competitors include veterans, firefighters, nurses, fitness trainers and an opera singer.

New this season: At a time when the Olympics are postponed, contestants will compete against Olympic champions and professional athletes, including New Jersey’s own Victor Cruz.

The show’s 32 competitors are split into three regions: West, Central and East, which includes New Jersey’s Shantal Athill, Courtney Roselle and Kareem Brinson.

The celebrity athlete roster for the East region includes UFC champion Tyron Woodley and Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Hannah Teter. The West has former Giants wide receiver Cruz, the Super Bowl champion who grew up in Paterson, and stuntwoman and “America Ninja Warrior” star Jessie Graff. The Central team is made up of Joe Thomas, former offensive tackle for the Cleveland Browns, and gold medalist boxer and middleweight champion Claressa Shields.

The show will crown one man and one woman regional champion before they go on to battle the reigning Titans. The two winners will each receive $100,000. If a professional athlete wins the top prize, the money goes to a charity of their choice.

In the first season, six New Jersey contestants made it to the game but only two reached the semifinals, Kara Lazauskas, a mixed martial arts fighter from Branchburg, and Brad Schaeffer, a foot and ankle surgeon from Weehawken. Georgia’s Charity Witt and Florida’s James Jean-Louis won the competition.

NJ Advance Media spoke with the three New Jersey contestants this season about their fitness and athletic background, the pandemic and their time on the show.

Shantal Athill

When a casting producer for “The Titan Games” reached out to Shantal Athill on Instagram, she wasn’t convinced it was the real deal.

“I thought it was like a spam DM at first,” Athill, 29, tells NJ Advance Media. But sure enough, Athill, a firefighter in Orange, applied for the show. It wasn’t long before she found herself at a combine in Los Angeles, one of 60 selected to try out for the show among tens of thousands.

The January event tested would-be contestants for measures like speed and agility. Athill became one of 32 who made the cut to join the lineup as the show filmed in Atlanta this past winter, wrapping up in February.

“I was an athlete all my life,” says Athill, who lives in East Orange and ran track at Montclair High School. She earned a Rutgers University scholarship to compete as a long jumper. After college, she worked as a personal trainer.

“I’m pretty much in the gym every day," she says, though the pandemic has made that a little more difficult.

“Now that the weather’s finally getting nicer, I can at least get outside and get some workouts in,” Athill says.

After working at city hall in Orange in the finance department, then in the recreation and community service department, Athill became a firefighter three years ago. The essential worker, who has been taking extra precautions when responding to calls during the pandemic, is no stranger to staying strong in a crisis.

Athill isn’t the only firefighter on this season of the show, which spotlights everyday heroes.

“Every single person, male or female, are great athletes in whatever their field is," she says. "We have doctors, first responders. They’re all still athletes and they’re amazing athletes ... Come get some sports.”

Courtney Roselle

Last year, Courtney Roselle was invited to become a WWE Diva.

That didn’t end up working out, but when she showed up to try out, women who had competed in the first season of “The Titan Games” were there. Roselle started on the path to becoming a The Rock-sanctioned athlete.

Producers of the show liked the trainer, CrossFit athlete and fitness model’s motivational speaking work and focus on body positivity.

“The experience was once in a lifetime," Roselle, 31, says of her time on the competition series. “I got to meet 31 other real-life superheroes. It was one of the most motivational experiences of my life.”

Roselle, who lives in Jersey City, works at Brazen Athletics in Hoboken and Black House Strength and Conditioning in Fairfield and Jersey City. She has long been an athlete, having played basketball for the University of Scranton.

But Roselle, who grew up in Cedar Grove, made a change when she started CrossFit seven years ago. She now works as a full-time trainer, speaker and clothing designer under her Iron Grace brand.

The trainer often speaks about body image and bullying using her own story as an example. Her early efforts at modeling were often dashed by people in the industry.

“I went out into the model world trying to grasp my feminine side," she says. “They told me that no little girl would ever want to look like me, to my face.”

But she later found that people were indeed looking for strong, athletic bodies. Vogue featured Roselle in its January 2018 issue for a feature on “fighting females.” Modeling jobs for Self and Shape magazines followed.

“It kind of took off from there,” she says. “I never gave up on being myself. Everything pays off. Finally, at 31 years old, I never felt more full, more rich in my soul.”

Roselle’s time on “The Titan Games” came just before the pandemic took over.

“I was home maybe a week and then we got shut down," Roselle says. She calls Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson “one of the most humble, amazing human beings.”

“I was a little intimidated, and he was all like, ‘Hi Courtney, how’s your day?’"

Kareem Brinson

Dwayne Johnson commands legions of fans worldwide. One is Kareem Brinson’s daughter Kali, 5.

So when she got to sit in the front row to see her father compete at “The Titan Games” in Atlanta, she was ecstatic.

“The Rock is her favorite person," Brinson says. “She can’t stop talking about him.”

Brinson, 35, who lives in Howell, works as a fitness coach and a DJ at clubs, lounges, weddings and other special events. Known as DJ Reem, he owns Total Xperience Entertainment.

When a casting producer for the show reached out to Brinson on Instagram, he figured it was some kind of spam.

“I didn’t answer it for about a week,” he says, and he left a follow-up email unanswered. Two weeks later, he found out the message was legit.

“To be in that environment was an amazing experience, one that I’ll take with me forever," he says of the show.

For seven years, Brinson has maintained a CrossFit habit, one that saw him through a weight loss journey. He weighed close to 300 pounds and shed more than 100.

“I hit a turning point where I was like, ‘I have to get it together,’" he says.

Now, he’s a coach and competitor. He didn’t know fellow CrossFit adherent Courtney Roselle before the show, but the two planned to compete on a team together this summer (the event was canceled because of the pandemic).

With gigs postponed or canceled due to the crisis, Brinson has been taking his DJ sets to social media and booking private Zoom events. He sees “The Titan Games” as a prime opportunity for people to indulge their love of sports.

“While it can’t replace basketball and baseball, it can still give you a good alternative," he says. “It’s something that people will stick to and check out."

“The Titan Games” is back Monday at 8 p.m. ET on NBC. See above for a sneak preview showing the first 10 minutes of the two-hour season premiere.

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