How I Earned the Black Band — One of 13 in the World

Black
Band
The Highest Rank in Dunking

How I Earned the Black Band — One of 13 in the World

By Piotr Zawiślak · Professional dunker, Poland 🇵🇱

There is a list, published by The Dunk Camp, of every dunker in the world who has earned the Black Band. It has 13 names on it. Mine is one of them — and I’m the only one from Poland.

If you don’t know dunking deeply, that sentence might not land yet. So let me explain what it actually means, because it’s the single most important thing to understand about me as an athlete.

Dunking has a black belt. It’s called the Black Band.

The best dunkers in the world worked with The Dunk Camp to build a ranking system called Dunk Levels — exactly like the colored belts in martial arts, worn as bands on the wrist. There are twelve bands, from White all the way up to the Elite tier: Purple, Brown, and finally Black.

To earn the Black Band you have to land the hardest dunks in the entire system, on a regulation 10-foot rim, all in one session — and clear a verified maximum vertical-jump requirement on top of it. You can’t collect the dunks over a month. You have to own them, on demand, in a single day.

Thousands of people can dunk. A few hundred can do elite dunks. Thirteen of us have a Black Band.

What it took

Years. A lot of them, mostly in Poland, far from the cameras and the big events that live in the United States. The truth is that being elite and being known are two completely different things, and for a long time I had the first without the second.

The Black Band session was the day all of it came together — the height, the control, the hardest dunks I have, landed back to back. When The Dunk Camp added my name to the list of 13, it was the proof that the work was real, measured against the best in the world.

Why I’m telling the story now

Because the next step is the United States. I want to train and compete in Los Angeles, Dallas, Las Vegas, and Miami with the dunkers I’ve looked up to for years — many of whom I finally met at The Dunk Camp 2026. I’m honest about the fact that I can’t fund that on my own. So I’m doing what the best dunkers do now: building a real home base, telling the story properly, and earning the sponsorship and the audience that make the dream possible.

This is where that starts. If you want to see what a Black Band looks like in motion, watch the dunks. And if you’re a brand or an event looking for a one-of-thirteen athlete, let’s talk.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *