How Caleb Hammett Became 'The Drip King'

Caleb Hammett approaches the faceoff stripe. He bends, positioning himself for another draw. Most of the crowd at UMass is there to see him. They scream his name — both given and fictional.

The Hanover, Mass., native isn’t your ordinary lacrosse player. He’s made a name for himself in two places — on the field, where he was a member of the All-CAA first team in 2022, and off the field, where he’s become one of the largest social media influencers in the sport.

Hammett — aka “The Drip King” — recently eclipsed 2 million followers on TikTok. He has just north of 370,000 followers on Instagram and 310,000 subscribers on YouTube. To those who aren’t necessarily lacrosse super fans, Hammett might just be the face of the sport.

That attracts equal parts fandom and ire. UMass head coach Greg Cannella said Hammett draws a crowd at every game, home or away.

It harkens back to the days when “Garber’s Gorillas” patrolled the field that now sports Hall of Fame head coach Dick Garber’s name. Garber’s players were gritty. Punch them, and they’ll punch back (and not always figuratively). “ZooMass” was once a lacrosse hotspot for fans — both for the team’s success and for the brand of lacrosse it played.

Now, decades later, there’s increased attention on UMass again. This time, for a very different reason.

“We have sort of this cult-ish following of kids at every game,” said Cannella, who played for Garber and is entering his 30th year as UMass’ head coach.

The chagrin, or perhaps resentment or jealousy, comes from opponents. Especially other faceoff men. The faceoff is a war. Two chiseled athletes go head-to-head in what’s essentially a full-body arm wrestling match for possession. It’s a full-out effort for 5, maybe 10, seconds. And these athletes do it 15-20 times per game.

Hammett is so quick with his hands and feet that when he gets momentum, he can completely tilt the field. He has a stable of defensive counters he can use to at least slow the opposition from winning possession cleanly. He’s also incredibly fit and strong, evidenced by the time he spends in the weight room with sports performance coach Antwan Harris.

So, any advantage helps.

“Sometimes, before he even takes a faceoff, the opposing team is coming after him,” Cannella said. “The other teams are jealous of his popularity and what he’s doing and the income he’s made.”

None of it bothers Hammett. Cannella thinks he’s matured past the point of it affecting his performance.

“Unless it’s my family or someone close to me, I honestly don’t care [about the chirping],” Hammett said. “I’m numb to that. … I take it as a compliment, the amount of people who know who I am. I don’t know who you are.”

If that sounds smug, Hammett doesn’t mean it that way. He is still getting used to this whole “social media star” thing. At the beginning of the 2023 season, Hammett had fewer than 100,000 TikTok followers. It took him only six months to reach 2 million.

In half a year, Hammett’s life has completely changed. He’s not the man people think he is after watching one of his many viral videos. He’s reserved. A loner. A family man. Most of all, he’s just trying to find happiness.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: LET’S DEFINE TWO KEY WORDS IN THE DRIP KING LEXICON — “drip” and “rizz.”

“Drip” is having style and looking good on the field. It’s the eye black and the shorter shorts and the helmet tilt. Maybe a leg sleeve for good measure.

That’s how The Drip King was born. At the beginning of last summer, Hammett began making “Drip or Skip” videos in which he rated someone’s drip on a scale of 1-10. It grew in popularity and first put him on the map.

Hammett is the adjudicator of drip. The curls that protrude from the back of his helmet. The signature eye black crosses that create intimidating shadows under his facemask. The tattoos on his right thigh only visible because his shorts could draw comparisons to the three-inch inseam of 1950s basketball players.

His appearance certainly draws attention.

“Rizz” is having charisma around women. It’s how the kids talk on social media, and Hammett is a key stakeholder in middle school slang.

There are layers to Hammett’s schtick. Much of his rise can be attributed to his connection to LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne, the most popular NCAA athlete in the world. Hammett’s attempts to court Dunne, who’s earned the mantle of “Drip Queen” from Hammett’s followers, have helped him reach virality.

While Hammett’s TikTok following is nothing to shake a stick at, it pales in comparison to the 7.7 million people who’ve followed Dunne.

So, when the two collaborated on a live TikTok in late January, his popularity boomed —perhaps even at a rate Hammett himself didn’t expect.

“I don’t necessarily find myself funny,” Hammett said. “But people around me do. I use that to my advantage.”

He tries to be “a breath of fresh air” in a stressful sports environment. Part of that is embracing his relationship with his faith. Hammett is vocal about God on his platform and thinks it wouldn’t be authentic to hide something from his audience that is such a pivotal part of his life.

It wasn’t always that way. Hammett grew up Catholic but described it was “lukewarm.” He and his family would attend church every once in awhile, but it was hardly part of his personality.

That changed last summer. Right when he began his social media journey, Hammett endured a breakup that was difficult to process. A few of his close friends at UMass were close with their faith and invited him to bible study. It helped him grow “tremendously.”

“It’s easy to talk about lacrosse, but when you really speak deeply with someone about what’s going with their life, you definitely get a deeper connection,” Hammett said.

Hammett’s faith has helped him embrace (and chase) two other lessons he tries to impart to his audience — humility and peace off the field.

“Followers, money, stuff like that, it’s all rewarding,” he said. “But it doesn’t buy happiness and shouldn’t change you as a person.”

LONG BEFORE THE DRIP KING WAS THE DRIP KING, Hammett wanted to make eye black.

He started wearing eye black when he was younger, for no other reason than he liked it. He didn’t wear much eye black as a freshman at college because he wanted to prove himself on the field before he drew too much attention to himself. Go figure.

So, the budding entrepreneur now enabled to pursue his passions by NIL language set out to make his dreams come true.

“I had calls with companies back then,” Hammett said. “To be quite frank, I was told the only way it would work is if I did white labeling with them. That motivated me even more to do it on my own.”

“White label” products are sold by retailers with their own branding and logo, but the products themselves are manufactured by a third party. For example: with stainless steel water bottles in high demand, an entrepreneur could find a white label partner who sends them generic stainless steel bottles for them to then affix their brand logo on.

That wasn’t going to work for Hammett. He wanted something entirely his.

Hammett drained every dollar from his bank account, one that had yet to see an influx of cash from his soon-to-be social media rise, to make the DripStick. He found a manufacturer overseas, made samples and perfected it.

“This company is 100-percent me,” he said. “There’s nothing else behind it.”

The Dripstick is a petroleum- and paraben-free eye black that “reduces glare and helps keep you focused on the field, on the court, in the classroom, on the links and even in the grocery store.”

“Beware of the imminent drip,” Hammett wrote in the testimonial section of www.dripstick.shop.

Hammett produced 1,800 sticks, sold in three packs along with “Drip Off Wipes” to remove after use. He sold the set for $36 and said the pack of three sticks should last a full season — even if he goes through a stick per week himself.

In February, his stock sold out in less than a day.

Hammett used his platform to market his product — a synergistic approach pushed often by Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry, the creators of “The Lacrosse Network” who now operate as a resource for content creators on YouTube and beyond.

“Eye black is eye black, but the DripStick is its own thing,” Hammett said. “It’s a community.”

Because the company is all him, Hammett fulfilled all the orders himself. He packed them, shipped them and even included a handwritten note with every order.

“Every penny came from my bank account,” he said. “I was just a broke college student when I did it.”

Hammett’s “Drip King” moniker has helped him earn lucrative partnerships with Warrior and Lax.com. Not to mention the countless appearances he makes at camps that often distract attendees from the reason they’re at these camps in the first place.

It’s Beatlemania in 2023, only the medium is a smartphone, and the subject is a person who, off camera, would prefer to be far away from the spotlight.

MITCHELL PEHLKE KNOWS A THING OR TWO ABOUT BEING A CONTENT CREATOR.

The Ohio State graduate, who owns and operates the YouTube channel bearing his name, has posted 600-plus videos on the platform and has more than 62,000 subscribers who come to him for longform content.

Pehlke knows what it’s like to live two lives, one on camera and one behind it. After meeting up with Hammett to do a collaboration last summer, he learned surprising things about his contemporary.

“He’s a little more reserved,” Pehlke said. “When you play a character on social media, you’re that character when you meet fans on the street. And that’s the hard part of playing the character. When Drip King is offline, he’s just Caleb.”