{"id":23882,"date":"2021-11-17T19:24:20","date_gmt":"2021-11-18T00:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom2\/2021\/11\/18\/necc-players-hair-becomes-viral-sensation\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T15:24:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:24:20","slug":"necc-players-hair-becomes-viral-sensation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2021\/11\/17\/necc-players-hair-becomes-viral-sensation\/","title":{"rendered":"NECC Player’s Hair Becomes Viral Sensation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Image<\/a>

SportsCenter’s Instagram post<\/p><\/div>\n

Haverhill, MA (November 17, 2021) The Northern Essex Knights basketball team has a lot of reasons to be proud of their season opening game: they bested a four-year school, the University of Maine-Augusta, 78-66 and earned their first opening night victory since the 2017\/18 season. But it wasn\u2019t their brilliant game play that now has images from that night going viral. It was the dazzling performance of one player\u2019s hair.<\/p>\n

NECC alum Andrew Comeau, who contributes to the popular @ballislife<\/a> social media accounts, initially went to the November 3rd game to cover a UMA player. But in the process, he got some great shots<\/a> of NECC\u2019s Matthew D\u2019Amato\u2019s distinctive \u2018do and asked him if he could share it on social media. \u201cI had no idea the video<\/a> would blow up the way it did. [He] told me it had a chance of making it on their Twitter, but I thought it was a long shot,\u201d says D\u2019Amato. \u00a0\u201cNext thing I know, it’s on their Twitter and Instagram where they have millions of followers.\u201d And that was just the beginning. ESPN\u2019s SportsCenter picked it up and shared with their 26.37 million Instagram<\/a> followers, dubbing D\u2019Amato the \u201cMullet Mamba\u201d in the process.<\/p>\n

Matthew D\u2019Amato is from Peabody and went to Salem State to play basketball in 2017. He made the team his second year but didn\u2019t see much playing time. He decided to leave school to work full-time. Then, the pandemic hit, and he found himself with a lot of time to reflect. \u00a0\u201cI stopped working and there was nothing to do.\u00a0 I felt like I didn’t have a purpose.\u00a0 I decided I wanted to go back to school to continue my education and maybe play basketball again.\u00a0 In order to do that, my mindset had to change, along with my hairstyle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"matt<\/a>

NECC Knights Media Day<\/p><\/div>\n

D\u2019Amato contacted NECC Basketball coach Darren Stratton who helped him enroll as a Liberal Arts major and secure a spot on the team. The next step in his transformation was reshaping his grown-out pandemic hair. He says he and his barber Rich Dulkis, at Messinas<\/a> in Danvers \u201c\u2026both thought a mullet would look cool.\u00a0 When I went home that first time after I got it, my family thought it was hilarious.\u201d D\u2019Amato says his sister got tired of the joke pretty quickly though, and begged him to cut it several times. \u201cThank God I didn’t.\u00a0The mullet turned into a statement for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for his sister, it looks like this may be just the beginning for D\u2019Amato\u2019s mullet. Since his photo and video were first shared on the evening of Monday, November 15, he\u2019s been inundated with messages and even interview requests. The story was featured on Snapchat and shared hundreds of times on Twitter and Instagram. SportsCenter\u2019s post has 330,000 likes and 3,600 comments. \u201cI was and still am in shock.\u00a0 I got mixed responses when I asked people how they felt about the mullet. I never knew it could get the attention it’s getting right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"matthew<\/a>Several promotional nights are in the works for upcoming NECC Knights home games, including the game on 11\/23, when the first 25 student fans who show up will get their very own mullet wigs to wear. D\u2019Amato is taking his new-found fame in stride and says he\u2019ll apply lessons learned from this experience to his clothing brand, Forevr\u00a0UnFinished, which he started in 2017. \u201cMy journey is exactly that, forever unfinished. I will always keep striving for more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Northern Essex Community College\u00a0competes as a member of the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) and sponsors 13 varsity intercollegiate sports. For more information on Northern Essex Community College Athletics please visit the official\u00a0website of Northern Essex Athletics<\/a> or email Athletic Director Dan Blair<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Haverhill, MA (November 17, 2021) The Northern Essex Knights basketball team has a lot of reasons to be proud of their season opening game: they bested a four-year school, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":33094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[75,85,288,360],"class_list":["post-23882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-students","tag-athletics","tag-basketball","tag-hair","tag-knights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNECC Player's Hair Becomes Viral Sensation - NECC News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2021\/11\/17\/necc-players-hair-becomes-viral-sensation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NECC Player's Hair Becomes Viral Sensation - 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