Justin Blanchard

Justin Blanchard is a 6’2″ dunker from Minnesota and the founder and president of the dunk club at Winona State University. He did not grow up an athlete. He picked up basketball at 14, mostly because he was already near six feet and his friends kept telling him he had to play. The nudge toward dunking came soon after, when a coach watched him finish a layup and told him he probably could have dunked it. Knowing how few people dunk at 14, that was enough. His first dunk came off the dribble at 16 turning 17.

His early training was not really training. He went to the park near his house, put in earbuds and jumped for hours, inventing game scenarios and crossing up imaginary defenders. He did it almost every day with no plan, and it carried him a long way before it stopped working; lifting came later, in college. He also came through all of that jumping without the knee pain most dunkers describe. As Hunter Castona put it on the episode, Justin has walked into a gym in November and thrown down an effortless two-hander before his shoes were on.

For years he cared about exactly one number, on the theory that a high enough vertical would take care of every dunk. School changed his mind. As a physical education major living with exercise science majors, he read the law of specificity written out plainly and understood that a low rim is a way to rehearse the movement rather than a shortcut. After Dylan Haugen asked him to try an Eastbay at an early group session and he caught nothing but the bottom of the net, Justin bought a low rim and spent the summer making Eastbays on a 9’8″ hoop. That dunk is now his signature.

Dunk Camp in 2022 turned him into an organizer. He came away quoting a talk about being field corn rather than a pampered house plant, and the reminder that the symptoms of nerves and excitement are identical. Justin went first in the 10-foot contest, announced to the room that he was excited, took his attempt, then dapped everybody up because he still was. Isaiah Rivera also spent part of that camp explaining that the hand has to stay under the ball, which is why Justin trains with a weighted one now. But it was the World Dunk Association’s case for promoting dunking as a sport that stuck, and when a friend suggested a dunk club, he built one.

Approval took a year, a written constitution and ten members on paper. What he built is deliberately open: meetings are posted as a time and a place, anyone can walk in, and nobody has to be able to dunk, because there is a low rim for the people who cannot. Winona State skews heavily toward women, so he designed it for any student rather than just athletes, and roughly 50 people have come through at least once. First dunks are his favorite part of the whole thing. He is a member of the Minnesota Dunk Squad too, and once entered an online contest between dunk groups in a Spider-Man suit several sizes too tight, an idea he blames on Jordan Kilganon. Ask why any of it exists and the answer has not changed since he filed the paperwork: to promote the sport of dunking, and to get more people into it.