This is episode 51 of the Dunk Talk Podcast, and it’s the one I’ve been waiting to record for a year: I hit my first Underboth. At 5’11”, at 17 years old, in Winona. I’m Dylan Haugen, with Hunter Castona, and this episode is the full chase documented honestly, plus Hunter’s winter update and the announcement of the Florida trip. If you’re grinding toward a dunk that keeps refusing you, this is the anatomy of how one finally goes down.
The year-long chase, attempt by attempt
The first Underboth attempt of my life was at the March 2024 session with Hunter: grabbed rim, lost the ball, not close. The timeline from there:
- Utah Dunk Camp, day one: first real close call, ball above the rim on the floppy 9’11”, but traveling upward into the backboard.
- Wisconsin Dunk Camp: decent attempts in the pro session, nothing closer.
- September-October: the breakthrough back-rims, two or three of them, which flipped the switch. My birthday is October 23 and I wanted it before 17, so I started spamming it, and the volume of repeated deep-hip-flexion attempts strained something in my abdomen.
- The Wisconsin trip: drove hours to Hunter’s gym for one of my last pre-birthday windows, felt the abdomen go on my first Eastbay, kept attempting Underboths anyway (do not do this), back-rimmed one, and paid for it with weeks of recovery. The birthday deadline died there, which is its own lesson about arbitrary deadlines and soft tissue.
- The setup: a very close Winona attempt a month ago told me it was there if I arrived fresh. So I ran five straight weeks of heavy lifting with no deload, pulled the cleans the final week as a mini-taper, and showed up to Winona on a Friday with fresh legs.
It went down. Same session: Eastbay off the backboard and an Elbow. One of the craziest sessions of my life, and we’ll probably react to the footage on a future episode. Then, because the weekend refused to calm down: won a dunk contest Saturday (double-up over two, a Windmill I hit by accident while attempting an Eastbay, and a Dubble Up Eastbay to close), played two basketball games Sunday, and attempted a low-rim session Monday in a negative-10 windchill that ended after 20 minutes because of two perfectly placed patches of ice under the hoop. The glamour of Minnesota dunking.
What actually made the difference
Three things, in order of importance. Freshness: every close attempt all year came on relatively fresh legs, and the make came after a deliberate taper; the failed birthday push came on a strained abdomen and accumulated fatigue. Evidence-based confidence: the September back-rims changed the dunk from aspirational to inevitable in my head, and from there it was scheduling, not hoping. Stopping when hurt (eventually): the abdomen injury cost me about six weeks against the maybe two weeks a smarter person would have lost by shutting the session down early. The chase from first attempt to make took about eleven months, which I’m told is fast for an Underboth at my height and which felt like a decade.
Next target, said out loud for accountability: Black Band. The current work is the 360 behind-the-back, which I’m attacking as a 360 reverse behind-the-back since my left hand makes the standard finish ugly, plus a 360 Eastbay off dribble or lob. The Underboth was the wall; the band is the war.
Hunter’s winter: plateaus, back-rims, and a camera business
Hunter’s update deserves its honest space. The brutal high-volume/high-intensity cycle from August finally tapered, producing a couple of good sessions and one great one before things wobbled again. His Eastbay, historically a warmup dunk, has gone foreign on him: he catches two-handed now no matter what his brain orders, and the dunk that used to be automatic takes multiple attempts. His misses are the maddening kind, back-rims flying past half court while his makes graze in. Main lifts are plateaued (squat stuck at 275 across four attempts, power clean peaked at 205 nearly a year ago) while his calf raises have nearly doubled, the classic profile of a body mid-adaptation. Sessions are stretching back from 45 minutes toward 90. The trend is up; the path is jagged; same story as always with him, and he keeps showing up.
The bigger structural news: Hunter’s photography and videography business took off this winter. He’s booked almost daily shooting basketball, sometimes four bookings in a day, which means 5:30 a.m. wakeups, gyms closed by the time he’s done, a home setup that can’t host cleans (metal plates, no bounce), and at least one weekend where dunking simply didn’t fit. His framing was refreshingly adult: dunking is the love, the camera is the income, and the income goes first right now without anyone pretending that’s quitting. Professional dunking remains the pursuit; the order of operations just got realistic.
The Florida trip
The announcement: my family’s spring break is in Orlando, and I’m not going to be in Isaiah Rivera’s city without a session. It snowballed exactly the way Vegas did. The current roster for the Friday session: me, Hunter, Dom, Josh Ruble, Isaiah, probably Austin (whose two-foot is suddenly looking dangerous), with Hunter, Dom, and Josh staying in Tampa and converging. Venue TBD between Goldenrod LA Fitness (legendary, see the environments episode) and the UCF practice facility, with my being underage complicating the rec-center option. I’ll be jumping on legs pre-fatigued by four consecutive Disney days, which is either a problem or a test of everything we said about adrenaline. Donovan was supposed to come and can’t, which is the trip’s one flaw.
The rest of the year’s travel wishlist, on the record: North Carolina (the blue gym, with Kilganon basically living there lately), Utah in June, Missouri again, and LA eventually. Also pending: getting Isaiah Knapp on the show, who just tested 50 and left me on undelivered (be nice, Isaiah), and an Andy Behle round two, since we interviewed him and he won the contest two days later.
One Underboth down, a band to go. Comment with the dunk you’re chasing and how long it’s had you; misery loves a timeline. Next episode is the full breakdown of that $1,000 Dunk Camp contest with Andy.