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Priest Amps Up Crowd With Dance Moves at a High School Basketball Game’s Halftime Show

By Regina Sienra on February 20, 2026

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Una publicación compartida por JPII Athletics (@jpiiathletics)

If the Super Bowl halftime show gets Bad Bunny, high school basketball gets… a priest dancing to 2000s pop music! Rev. Nonso Ohanaka, best known as Father O, busted out some moves to NSYNC’s “Bye, Bye, Bye” during a match at Pope Saint John Paul the Second Preparatory School in Tennessee. He then became a national sensation after the school posted it to social media.

Before the dancing priest made waves across the internet, his students were well aware of his moves. When Ohanaka became the school chaplain in 2022, he bonded with the students through dance. “When I first got here, they would encourage me. But at this point I think they’re like, ‘Oh, Father is at it again,’” he told The Tennesseean.

Ohanaka, who has enjoyed dance since he was little, after watching a breakdancing episode of Postcards from Buster on PBS Kids, saw it as a way to hype up the school athletes. A few years ago, he and Rev. Anh Tuan Phan, from Father Ryan High School, danced off over Instagram ahead of a football game between the two schools. The recent video of him dancing at halftime is from yet another match against Father Ryan, reviving the cheeky rivalry between their schools.

While Ohanaka has said the choreography in the now-viral clip is not his finest, he attributes part of the attention it got to the fact that he’s a priest. “I think it’s all the collar and the splits at the end. Because my dance moves are not that good,” Ohanaka says. Still, he appreciates that it may help broaden people’s perception of someone like him. “Because people see priests, they see the collar and think ‘that person is way over there,’” Ohanaka says. “So, trying to help them realize priests are people too.”