All the right moves

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This article was published 04/03/2017 (3136 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than three million people — and that number is growing by the minute — have checked out a Facebook video of eight-year-old Brampton goalie Noah Young since it was posted on Monday.

The video doesn’t feature Noah making a sizzling save for his novice AAA hockey team, the Brampton 45s. It also doesn’t show him in a spectacular on-ice collision.

What it does show is a pint-sized goaltender with moves like Jagger, dancing on a hockey rink in his skates and goalie pads to the Zay Hilifigerr and Zahlon McCall song Juju On That Beat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNz6oSrZDAk

 

The video was recorded by a fan Saturday at Noah’s final game of the season. For the record, his team didn’t win a game all season, but that wasn’t about to stop Noah from busting his moves virtually non-stop and becoming an Internet sensation.

“He dances all the time,” his mom, Paige Rowswell, told dozens of curious media outlets last week. “On the bench, in between whistles, when the whistle goes, he’s dancing all the time. Everybody on the team knows him as a dancing goalie.”

Along with hockey, dancing is Noah’s life. When he isn’t stopping slapshots, the eight-year-old netminder is attending all-boys hip hop classes at Leap Dance Academy in Brampton.

Noah is enjoying his time in the spotlight, but he’s far from the first athlete to earn a reputation for sweet moves on the field of play, as we see in our toe-tapping list of the Greatest Dancers in Sports History:

 

5) The dancer: Elbert L. “Ickey” Woods

The dance: The Ickey Shuffle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9oVth5rJbg

 

The breakdown: For the record, Ickey Woods was a pretty good football player who spent his entire NFL career (1988-1991) with the Cincinnati Bengals. In his rookie year, he rushed for 1,066 yards, led the NFL with 15 touchdowns, and carried his team to Super Bowl XXIII, which they lost 20-16 to the San Francisco 49ers.

But we don’t remember him for that. No, the world remembers him best for the Ickey Shuffle, a signature dance he performed in the end zone after scoring a touchdown.

It went like this: he’d shuffle his feet to the right and hold the football out to the right, shuffle his feet to the left and hold the ball to the left, and finally finish by doing three hops to the right and spiking the ball to the ground.

Naturally, the uptight league created a rule designating the dance (and similar celebrations) an “excessive celebration” and subject to a penalty against the dancer’s team. You might call the shuffle The Dance That Wouldn’t Die, because Ickey — a nickname based on his little brother’s mispronunciation of his first name, which sounded like “E-E” — still performs it in TV commercials, such as a recent GEICO ad wherein he gleefully spikes deli cold cuts.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would still be paying me today, but you have got to take what you can get,” Ickey told Sports Illustrated. “The younger generation now knows me as ‘Mr. Cold Cuts’ — where the older generation knows me for the Ickey Shuffle.”

He came up with the dance the night before a game against the Cleveland Browns while goofing around with his kids when his mom was in the room. “I said, ‘Mom, if I score tomorrow, this is what I’m going to do! She said, ‘Boy you best not do that!’” And the rest, as they say, is dance history.

 

4) The dancer: Marcus Dell Gastineau

The dance: The Sack Dance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5kVTUudxoA

 

The breakdown: In the history of the National Football League, there have been few players as fearsome as Mark Gastineau, a defensive end who spent his 10-year career harassing opposing quarterbacks on behalf of the New York Jets.

A five-time Pro Bowler, the 6-5, 275-pound Gastineau revolutionized his position with blazing speed that led to him recording 1071/2 sacks in only his first 100 starts in the NFL. In 1985 alone, he registered 22 sacks, an NFL record that stood for 17 years until the New York Giants Michael Strahan broke it in 2001. He was the most famous member of a ferocious defensive line that became known as the “New York Sack Exchange.”

More importantly, he turned his ability to crush quarterbacks into an art form, performing his ritual “Sack Dance” every time he hammered an enemy pivot into the ground. It wasn’t exactly the waltz; it was more a large, enraged man shimmying and shaking in an out-of-control manner.

Here’s how Giants legend Strahan described it: “Mark made the defensive end position a glamorous position. You didn’t get a sack and go back to the huddle. You got up and did that Gastineau dance, the Sack Dance, the crazy man dance.”

In 1984, the NFL declared it “unsportsmanlike taunting” and began handing out fines for doing it.  We’ll give the last word to Sports Illustrated’s Bruce Newman, who wrote in 1984: “The Sack Dance was cleverly named, always colourful, and certainly had its rhythmic moments. But was it dancing? No. If eliminating the Sack Dance had any redemptive value at all, it wasn’t because Gastineau’s moves were bad for the game, so much as it was that they were bad moves. In full flight, he looked less like a man dancing than someone who had just set fire to his clothes.”

Sadly, Gastineau was recently diagnosed with dementia.

 

3) The dancer: Deion Sanders

The dance: The Prime Time Dance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUR2M_yhKzU

 

The breakdown: There have been few greater athletes in history than Deion Sanders. If you doubt this, just ask Deion Sanders.

The famously cocksure and flashy Sanders was drafted in 1989 and, before retiring in 2006, became a superstar defensive back, kick returner and sometimes-wide receiver with the Atlanta Falcons, San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins and Baltimore Ravens. He also played Major League Baseball and is the only man to play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series, hit an MLB home run and score an NFL touchdown in the same week, and to have both a reception and an interception in the Super Bowl.

It’s little wonder he earned the nickname “Prime Time.” Now a TV football analyst, he is likely best remembered for performing his “Prime Time Dance,” which began well before he entered the end zone. In online sports circles, it is typically considered the greatest NFL touchdown celebration of all time. Here’s how to do it… 

1. As you approach the end zone, place football in the outside hand; 
2. Place inside hand on the back of the helmet; 
3. Elevate legs as high as possible and take long strides; 
4. In the end zone, hop around with as much attitude as possible.

Notes the sports website Shirts.com: “The swagger of modern football can, debatably, be traced back to one man, Deion Sanders. Sure, players had high-stepped into the end zone before, but never with as much finesse as Deion. It didn’t stop there either — once in the end zone, Deion’s feet kept dancing. Mimicked, but rarely perfected, few can truly pull of the Prime Time Dance like Deion. It’s more than just high-stepping, it’s about attitude.”

His patented touchdown dance moves are still imitated by NFL players today, but they just can’t match “Neon Deion’s” Hall of Fame swagger.

 

2) The dancer: Shaquille “Shaq” O’Neal

The dance: The Gorilla Dab (and others)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zep_rd7oT0

 

The breakdown: Maybe we’re biased towards big men, but there’s something special about the sight of a 7-1, 325-pound human being busting a few oversized moves like he just don’t care.

On the court, Shaq is a legend, thanks to a Hall of Fame career that saw him play for six teams over 19 years in the NBA. As a superstar centre, the man known as “Shaq,” “The Big Aristotle,” “The Diesel” and countless other nicknames famously led the L.A. Lakers to three straight NBA titles starting in 2000. He nabbed a fourth crown after being traded to the Miami Heat. He is one of only three players to win NBA MVP, All-Star game MVP and Finals MVP in the same year (2000).

The big question is this: Can the man dance? The answer: Big time!

Throughout his career, the hulking centre was known to bust a move at the drop of a hat. Even more famously, in a 2010 YouTube video, you can watch him going head to head in a freestyle dance off with Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber.

Gushed The Biebs: “I was surprised how well Shaq could actually dance. It was cool.” Chirped Shaq: “I don’t like to beat up on kids, but I won that battle. If we release this on YouTube we’re gonna get a couple of million hits.” And they did.

Last year, he used his dancing powers for good, helping the American Diabetes Association kick off its Diabetes Dance Dare campaign, wherein people were encouraged to record videos of their best moves and share them online via Instagram or Twitter.

He even invented a new dance called the “Gorilla Dab,” which he unleashed during an episode of the show NBA on TNT.

At the time, Shaq explained he created the dance because whenever he goes to the zoo, gorillas always come up to him and stare. He capped it off by boogying with Charles Barkley, the Round Mound of Rebound. All of which explains his other nickname, “The Big Baryshnikov.”

 

1) The dancer: Gabriel “Dancing Gabe” Langlois

The dance: Whatever moves him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqcwWTVLvWo

 

The breakdown: Our No. 1 sports dancer doesn’t do his thing on the playing surface. No, he gets his groove on up in the stands with the rest of us mortals. For the last 30 years or so, the man every Winnipegger has come to know as Dancing Gabe has been rooting on Winnipeg’s pro sports teams and driving fans wild with his sweet moves and unrelenting optimism.

If you’ve ever been to a game featuring the Winnipeg Jets, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers or the Winnipeg Goldeyes, you’ve seen Gabe shimmying and shaking in support of the home team, cheered on by crowds that have come to love the city’s No. 1 superfan.

Last year, he was honoured by the Winnipeg Goldeyes, who doled out Dancing Gabe bobbleheads to the first 1,000 visitors to come through the turnstiles at Shaw Park. He was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, but that has never slowed down his passion for Winnipeg’s sports teams.

A book about his incredibly uplifting life, Dancing Gabe: One Step at a Time, hit bookstore shelves in 2015.

“Aside from the odd player on the opposition bench and a few on the home side, Gabe Langlois is the best-known person at every Winnipeg Jets home game,” wrote former Free Press reporter Geoff Kirbyson in a 2015 article published in The Hockey News.  “Whether it’s the Jets, the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers, baseball’s Winnipeg Goldeyes or high school sporting events around town, Langlois is there, showing off a soft sneaker whenever the music plays. You want popularity? Cults would kill to have the following he has….”

In 2010, Gabe won the Dancing with Celebrities fundraiser, wiping the floor with this columnist. So you just know he has to be good.

 

All the smooth movers on today’s list dance like no one is watching. We should all dance like that, although in our cases, it’s unlikely anyone would want to watch.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca