NORTHAMPTON — Pat Dickert dunked for the first time at age 14, taking flight and extending a basketball to his limit.
It cleared the regulation 10 feet, and he gripped the rim briefly on the way back down to the hardwood floor at the Northampton Athletic Club.
“It probably took me 30 tries before I could finally squeak one in,” said Dickert, who was 6-foot-1 then in February of 2010.
It was the first of many dunks for Dickert, and it started him on the path to recognition from Bristol, Connecticut, to Taiwan.
He first dreamed of dunking on the asphalt courts and hardwood gyms in Hatfield when touching the net garnered praise.
Dickert progressed from the net to dunking on low rims between ages 11 and 13 before completing the 10-foot jam.
Dunking increased Dickert’s burgeoning love of basketball and inspired him to improve as a player and a dunker.
He would punctuate practices and workouts with dunk shows that teammates, friends or workout partners filmed.
“I would always grab a phone or camera or whatever we had and shoot video,” said Mat Sulda, who grew up with Dickert in Hatfield and scored 1,000 points for Smith Academy. “I was never up as high as he was.”
Dickert school-choiced and attended Northampton High School for two years.
He played junior varsity basketball his freshman year but would sneak over to the varsity practice whenever he could.
“Sometimes I’d invite him, sometimes I didn’t,” Northampton coach Rey Harp said. “He certainly was good enough to play varsity for us that year.”
Dickert proved it his sophomore year as the sixth man for the Blue Devils’ Western Massachusetts Division 1 championship team in 2011.
“You could see ambition in everything he did,” Harp said. “He really wanted to leave a mark.”
Dickert attended Loomis Chaffee for his junior, senior and post-grad seasons before moving on to Colby, where he just completed his sophomore year.
The dunking exhibitions persisted from high school to college.
He bonded with fellow Colby freshman Carl-Philip Majgaard, a 7-footer from Copenhagen, over “mutual Scandanavian experience” and basketball.
Dickert studied abroad in Norway in the spring of 2010 as a freshman in high school and spoke competent Norwegian to Majgaard.
The pair “dunked around” after practices and posted the videos to Instagram, launching “Take Flight Tuesday.”
In March of 2015, Dickert, all of 6 feet, 2 inches, was determined he could jump over Majgaard.
“I think we gave it three or four tries. The third time he pretty much made it. The fourth time, he hit it perfectly,” Majgaard said. “I knew he could do it. Pat is a pretty bouncy guy. It’s ridiculous that he could do that. I had nothing but faith in him.”
The #takeFlightTuesday movement started slowly.
Dickert hovered around 2,500 followers on his Instagram account “luftnorge.” (It translates to “air Norway.”)
Then he decided to take off from the free-throw line.
“Most people don’t really try to do the dunk,” Dickert said. “In reality, I wouldn’t call myself an elite athlete necessarily. Because I was able to practice it and just had it in my head, maybe I’d be able to get it. I kept trying to jump as far as I can.”
He posted the video May 18 with a three-word caption: “I got it.”
It totaled 252,000 views in three weeks.
YouTube viewers watched the dunk more than 310,000 times, garnering interest from media organizations as large as USA Today and as far away as Taiwan.
He gained 12,000 Instagram followers.
“The experience was very much uncharted territory for me,” Dickert said. “I had to leave my phone when I left the house because there was so much going on I would get sucked in. It created a much bigger image than I could have imagined.”
His Mule teammates’ phones lit up with a notification about Dickert that read “6-foot-2 college player dunks from behind foul line” from ESPN.
“I think we’re a little taken aback by how big it became. He really did go viral,” Majgaard said. “We were pretty impressed. We’re proud of what he’s done.”
They’re also making sure the attention doesn’t enthrall him.
“They have a way of keeping my head screwed on straight,” Dickert said. “Even if I get excited about a big dunk, they’ll be the ones being like ‘you’ve still got to make your jump shots.’”
The time demands created by the attention overwhelmed Dickert.
“I didn’t anticipate it being that much work. When it reached the peak of its most viral I had to schedule my day,” he said. “When you get your 15 minutes of fame I’m the type of person who wants to ride it.”
The attention, which occurred in the offseason, didn’t distract Dickert from improving as a basketball player.
He came off the bench for Colby his first two seasons, scoring 6.0 points per game last year.
“He was probably one of our most consistent players coming off the bench,” Colby coach Damien Strahorn said. “He’s a dynamic player in the sense that he can put a lot of pressure on teams with his athleticism and his versatility. The best thing he did for us was attacking the rim.”
The Mules graduated seven seniors from a 16-9 team. Dickert knows he’ll need to step into a larger role as an upperclassman.
“I want to come back and be the best leader I possibly can be at Colby,” he said.
Beyond that, he dreams of playing basketball professionally, a possibility his dunking notoriety enhances.
“There’s a funny thing about basketball where it’s sort of been the most integral part of my life. It serves more as like the backbone. It’s opened doors for me,” he said. “I still want to give back to the game. I love it. I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon. After college, I’m going to campaign and do my best to play overseas because that’s been my big dream since I was a kid.”
Dickert is back home in Hatfield this summer, working out in the Northampton High School gym and weight room.
Current Blue Devil players flocked to watch him put on a show recently.
They filmed his dunking display on their phones and asked about his leg workout regimen.
He follows Jordan Kilagnon’s Bounce Kit program. It involves variations on squats, deadlifts, step ups and lunges.
Dickert will use medium to heavy weights, 60 to 70 percent of his max, but focus on explosive reps.
He usually leaves the ground on the lift and jump reps.
“I know a lot of these kids. These are guys that aspire to dunk at some point in their life,” Dickert said. “The reason why I think it’s so fun for me is that it gives me an opportunity to show them that they can do it, too. I was the same kid five years ago in high school that wanted to dunk and kept working at it.”
Harp is glad to have Dickert back at Northampton, even if his jersey says “Colby” instead of “Northampton.”
“I love it when he’s around the guys. He’s a folk hero. These last two three weeks have added to that legend,” Harp said.
Commenters online have challenged the authenticity of his famous video. Dickert made sure he put one down from the Northampton free-throw line to prove them wrong and show off his progress.
Dickert took six attempts that either missed or his foot crossed the line too far for his liking.
Then he hit it perfectly.
“There’s this moment in time where everything is just kind of suspended. I feel like it’s a rush and time slows down. All I have is my eyes and the rim,” he said. “I’m sort of up there forever, and that’s the reason I love to dunk.”
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com.