If you didn’t already know, the celebratory dance that athletes are doing is not sneezing, it’s #dabbin.
This popular sports trend, more specifically shown on the football field by NFL Star Cam Newton, has grown to a nationwide trend with #dabbin being posted 203,095 times on Instagram.
The origins of this popular dance started with a rap group named Migos, who a music video last September that featured the dance. The popular dance move, in which a person moves their nose to their elbow, took off and made it onto football fields and basketball courts as professional athletes use this to celebrate.
Head coach for the Moorpark College women’s basketball team, Kenny Plumer, offered some insight as to why dabbin’ is so popular.
“I think it’s so popular because it’s an easy thing to do so anyone can do it,” said Plumer. “The dab doesn’t require any hard or coordinated dance moves, so more people do it.”
Shane Dorriz, 18-year-old business administration major, believes dabbing is done like any celebratory dance to grab the fan’s attention.
“I think there is always some popular dance per say,” said Dorriz. “Dabbin’ is like the new whipping.”
The whip, where someone plants their feet and sways their hips and shoulders back and forth, is still popular, but it is nowhere near as popular as the dab is right now.
Newton first performed the celebratory dance after scoring a touchdown in an Oct. 2015 game. Ever since then, people everywhere have been dabbin’ away.
According to a CBS Sports article, this past winter, people had built snowmen into the shape of Newton doing the dab.
There is some controversy behind the dance because the term dabbing also refers to what someone does when they get high off of THC, which is a key component of cannabis.
No matter which side of the fence you are on, Dorriz, a men’s track athlete here at Moorpark specializing in the long jump and high jump, says that athletes feed off the energy of fans, which is why not just the dab, but all dance moves are so popular to celebrate with.
“I am an athlete, but we live off the energy of our audience and to be able to do something that everyone knows, it can get people hyped together,” said Dorriz. “If you are joking around, we like to dab to be the coolest person whether it be on the court or on the field.”
So this semester, whether it be to celebrate mid-terms or that game winning basket, dab on!
