He’s 9, from Seattle, and in the USA Mullet Championship

It was in May of 2022 that her son returned home from the barber with a mullet haircut.

As Candace Keene explains, “I’m not a mullet fan. I grew up in New Mexico in a double-wide trailer. I associated a mullet with an uncultured kind of connotation, a little bit of a dirt bag.”

David Spade made a couple of “Joe Dirt” movies that showcase that particular mullet lifestyle.

But now the Magnolia mom is proud her son, Walker Castle, 9, has made it to Round 2 of three rounds in the online 2023 USA Mullet Championships in the category for kids, meaning ages up to 12. He’s calling himself “The Seattle Paddle.”

There were 900 entrants in all categories that included men and women, with 300 competing in the kids’ section.

Clicking on MulletChamp.com and seeing so many mullets at once is a visual journey. There is no warning message.

Voting ends at 9 p.m. Monday, with the final round taking place Aug. 7-11. In addition to Walker representing Seattle, a Bremerton boy, Rocky Cammarata (“The Washington Waterfall”), also is a finalist.

When at first seeing that mullet on her son last year, Keene remembers rationalizing, “It’s not my hair. It’s part of his personality and uniqueness.”

Walker, who’s in fourth grade, says he likes that it gives him an early Neymar 2012 look.

That would be Neymar the Brazilian superstar, who likes to experiment with his hairstyles. There’s a Pinterest site titled, “50 Neymar haircuts.”

Walker plays goalie and forward on a soccer team and is a big fan of the game. His dad, Taylor Castle, says the two sometimes get up at 4 or 5 in the morning to catch Manchester United or FC Barcelona in their European games.

Father and son go to The Caboose on Gilman barbershop in Issaquah, which they began frequenting when the family lived in Bellevue.

The owner, Kris Powers, explains that Walker has perfect hair for a mullet.

“He’s got ‘fast hair,’” Powers says about Walker. “When he’s running, it just flows.”

The barber says that Walker showed up with a head full of hair after the COVID-19 isolation.

“We talked about what we could do with the hair, different styles,” Powers says.

He says that with young guys, it’s back to the late ’80s, early ’90s. “It’s all cyclical.”

That means mullets, that means bleaching the tips of hair.

The tips of their hair? “Yeah, for guys. Kinda crazy.”

Powers says that Walker has a standard mullet.

That would be, “Looks like a business cut up front. In the back, a whole lot of party going on.”

The 9-year-old says that sometimes he looks at himself in the mirror. Sometimes he thinks, “This is a strange hairstyle.” Then, “I just love it.”

To promote people voting online for him, Walker has gone to places like the historic Starbucks store at the Pike Place Market, where tourists line up. He shows them a poster with a QR code that makes it easier to vote for him.

The tourists take it in stride.

MulletChamp.com states that the mullet has a long history: “Homer even described a haircut that sounds eerily familiar in The Iliad: ‘their forelocks cropped, hair grown long at the backs.’”

It goes on to list famous mullet personalities, claiming Benjamin Franklin as an early mulleter: “His bald-on-the-top, long-at-the-back style was one form of the mullet.”

The website shows old images of David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Billy Ray Cyrus, Mel Gibson, Joan Jett, Wayne Gretzky and other personalities during their mullet days. Randy Johnson during his Mariners years is there, too.

The winners in the contest will be determined by number of votes, how much money voters donated to the Homes for Wounded Warriors (the site says all contributions go directly to the charity) and a panel of judges.

Walker says he doesn’t know how long he’ll be a mullet guy.

His mom says, “I was encouraging him to try a different haircut.’ He said, “I can’t. It defines me.’”