Business in the front, party in the back: These two Wisconsin kids are in the USA Mullet Championships finals
GREEN BAY — It's business in the front and party in the back for these two northeast Wisconsin kids.
Five-year-old Axel Wenzel of Brillion and 13-year-old Max Weihbrecht of Lawrence have made it to the final round of the USA Mullet Championships. Each hopes to take home the title of best mullet in the country for their age divisions.
The event is a national competition in which kids to adults submit photos of their luscious locks, trying to gather enough likes on Facebook to advance to the next round.
Both boys made it to the final stages and will need votes if they're going to take home first place.
Two other Wisconsin kids are also in the finals: Emmitt Bailey of Menomonie and Cayden Kershaw of Wausau.
Voting is open until Friday and you can vote once a day for both the teen and the kids' divisions.
There were almost 700 original entries for the kids' division and, after three rounds of voting, Axel made it into the final 25 mullets. There were 80 teens in the first round of voting, and now Max is in the top 11.
While this is both boys' first year in the competition, these mullets have been two years in the making.
Max came to his parents one day asking for a perm and a mullet.
"We kind of laughed about it and said, 'No way.' But we were just joking," Katie Weihbrecht, Max's mom, said. "So he had a haircut coming up, and we told him we weren't going to do it."
But then Katie surprised Max by telling the hairdresser to give him exactly what he wanted.
"I look cool," was what Max thought when he looked in the mirror at his new cut.
He gets lots of compliments on his hair while out and about, Katie said.
"It is a lot of adult men. (They) think it's very cool — older teens through probably 50s," Katie said.
Aside from mullets being cool hairstyles, the boys are were inspired to grow their hairdos in the hopes of getting their dream cars.
Axel's uncle promised him a mid-80s IROC-Z Camaro if he keeps his mullet until he's 16, so his mom brought out the scissors to give him a new cut.
If Max wins the competition and the $1,000, he's hoping to put it toward a red 1980s Chevy pickup truck.
"Chevy's for smart kids," Max said.
Katie first found out about the competition last year when a local kid made it to the finals.
"Then I saw the USA Mullet Championships Facebook post about registration, and then we just knew that we had to apply," she said.
To enter they had to submit front, back and side images of the boys' mullets as well as a name for their locks.
After doing some research, Axel's mom, Jessica Wenzel, found that some of the kids Axel was up against had parents with over 300,000 social media followers. She wasn't expecting him to make it to the final round.
“I started to feel like defeated. I was kind of just like, ‘Well, it was fun while it lasted. This may be the end of it,’" she said. "But our local family and friends in town just pulled through."
Axel's mullet is called "The Axel" since its his signature haircut now. Max's is named Bill Ray after one of the most famous mullet men around: Billy Ray Cyrus.
There also was a $10 entry fee, half of which goes to a nonprofit in Michigan that provides wigs for kids with hair loss due to illness. That was a big reason why Jessica Wenzel, Axel's mom, had him enter.
"I'm definitely a do-good, feel-good type of person," she said, and she wanted to get her kids involved in efforts to give back to the community.
When she found out the first-place prize money was $2,500, she asked Axel what he'd do with it, and, at first, he told her all the things he would buy.
"I was like, 'Well, you could go buy all of those things, but do you think maybe there's other people out there that need things a little bit more than you do?'" she said.
Then Axel said he would donate some of the money to the reptiles at the Brillion Nature Center and the rest to a homeless shelter in the community.
"I wanted to see that side of him and now he's all about it," Jessica said.
You might think the boys require some haircare routine or special styling to make it to the finals — but no. Once their hair is cut, the boys' mullets are au naturel.
Max gets his permed and recently had an American flag shaved into the side of his head, but otherwise, he just lets it fly.
"I wake up and put a hat on," and that's his routine, he said, and he has no intentions of cutting it anytime soon. He said he'll be keeping the style until he's 80 — if he still has hair.
Katie thought, come summertime, he might get annoyed having longer hair as he's swimming and playing outside.
"(If) girls can do it, I can do it," he said.
Jessica said Axel loves his mullet and it gives him confidence. One day, the family was at the Brillion Nature Center and there was a snake in their path.
"Axel came running full-force ahead and said, 'Don't touch the snake. I have the mullet; I'll move the snake,'" she said.
That's right on-brand for Axel because he loves anything that has to do with reptiles and getting down and dirty.
"He loves going and like catching frogs and insects, grasshoppers, crickets, snakes — he likes doing all of that sort of thing," Jessica said. "He's definitely an outdoorsy kid."
Axel's mullet, along with his name, fits his personality, Jessica said.
"I feel like he was born to have this hairstyle," she said. "... He's one of those kids that just does not care what anybody else thinks. He does what he wants to do when he wants to do it, without a question."
Danielle DuClos covers k-12 education in the Green Bay area as a Report for America corps member. She is based at the Press-Gazette in Green Bay. To contact her, email dduclos@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @danielle_duclos.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: USA Mullet Championships finals feature these 2 Wisconsin kids
