On any given night when the Boston Celtics played a home game this past year, you likely saw True Becker, E25, on center court of TD Garden. Sprinting with a basketball in hand, he would launch himself from a trampoline, flip high above the rim, and slam-dunk the basketball in equal parts power and style. As he reached the net, the arena’s 19,000 fans would go wild. 

That was a typical school night this past season for Becker, a member of the Celtics dunk team—officially named the JetBlue Flight Crew—an entertainment group that performs superhuman dunking feats during timeouts and half-times at Celtics home games. 

It’s a combination of sheer athleticism, aerial gymnastics, parkour, and breakdancing, hyping up the fans alongside teammates and Celtics mascot Lucky the Leprechaun. Among his teammates is Becker’s younger brother, Tate, whom he often pairs with to execute tricky passes.

“Being in TD Garden is just all-encompassing,” says Becker. “Especially when you’re on the floor. All the energy, all eyes on you, and you just feel this adrenaline. I can’t wait to perform. I can’t wait to do this.”

It’s hard to imagine, but just a few hours before game time he would typically have been running across campus to the Nolop makerspace to fabricate his homework assignment for an engineering class. The senior appears equally at home using a table saw as he is on center stage—whether in TD Garden or competing on the nationally televised American Ninja Warrior show, which he did when he was 17. 

He credits his parents, Rob Becker, E93, and Lisa Liberty Becker, J93, for supporting his passions, which included an all-hands-on-deck family engineering project to transform a childhood swing set into a backyard ninja warrior training course, sparking his interest in mechanical engineering. 

His parents also fostered passion for the performing arts. “When I was younger, I went to a bunch of a cappella concerts with my mom—it was sort of a little tradition we had,” says Becker. “We went to a couple of Tufts Beelzebubs shows, and I remember just being amazed by their energy, thinking they definitely were having so much fun.”

Now it’s another one of his passions, and he is music director of the Beelzebubs, leading a cappella rehearsals and bringing the group to gigs worldwide, with performances in San Francisco and China this past semester alone.

It’s a lot to juggle—Celtics game performances, Beelzebub rehearsals and concerts, a demanding engineering class schedule—but Becker wouldn’t have it any other way. He seems to enjoy the challenge and generates energy from taking on things he loves.

“I was very willing to try everything and give everything a shot,” says Becker. “I wasn’t afraid to fail, do things wrong, and learn to be able to do things right. I think that's a motto I like to live by.”