Texas Youth Football Coach Busts a Move on the Field
Coach Jermaine Cooper's pre-game dance was captured on camera.
-- A Texas youth football coach whose pre-game dance routine went viral said he could not resist moving when he heard his fraternity’s song played at the game.
Jermaine Cooper, a coach of the West Beaumont Bulldogs in Beaumont, Texas, was caught on camera by a team parent dancing to “Atomic Dog” by George Clinton during his team’s pre-game warm-up earlier this month.
Cooper said today on “Good Morning America” that the song is well-known by his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi. When a fellow coach decided to play the song before the game, Cooper could not resist busting a move.
“It wasn’t nothing planned at all,” said Cooper, whose uncle is the team's head coach and whose nephew plays for the team. “I just went ahead and did what I was always known to do.”
Video of Cooper’s dance has been viewed more than 12,000 times on Instagram.
Cooper said that whenever the song comes on, members of Omega Psi Phi, the first international fraternal organization founded on the campus of a historically black college, according to its website, are expected to do a hop.
“We strive for greatness and so everything that we do, we always want to look good at what we do,” he said. “When that song comes on, every member that’s a member of Omega Psi Phi, we always set out a hop and so that’s all I was doing. I was setting out one of our hops that we do at parties and stuff like that.”
Cooper, in his second year of coaching the team, is known for the innovative ways he motivates the team's young players. He and his fellow coaches wear shirts that say "I believe. I am. I can. I will" and try to calm the players' nerves before games.
The team won its game this weekend, 31-12. Cooper, who does something different before each game, gave a motivational speech to his players before the start of their most recent victory.