Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Looking Forward To When Dancing Days Are Here Again
March 30, 2020 07:10 PM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – We could use a little bit of the Dancing Man right now to brighten our days as we continue to deal with this frightening COVID-19 virus that is spreading throughout the world.
The Dancing Man, of course, is Buckhannon's Charles Hayes, voted the "No. 1 Fan in the Land" in a recent Instagram contest. Just three years ago, West Virginia's top fan had never even been to a Mountaineer football game.
Who knew his first one would turn out the way it did?
Hayes was born in Orlando, Florida, and grew up in Ellicott City, Maryland, before attending West Virginia Wesleyan College, where he said he played a little football, baseball and did some cheerleading for the Bobcats.
Now an elementary school special needs teacher in Buckhannon, Hayes and his wife, Haley, were guests of family friends for West Virginia's game against Texas Tech on October 14, 2017.
That was his first time ever seeing the Mountaineers in person.
"We were pretty excited about the opportunity to go," Hayes recalled.
Hayes, unfamiliar with the surroundings at Milan Puskar Stadium and undeterred by West Virginia's lack of success against the Red Raiders, was enjoying himself and trying to boost the spirits of those around him even as Texas Tech kept scoring touchdown after touchdown.
By the end of the third quarter, however, he was getting a little gassed just like those Mountaineer defensive players down on the field who were chasing the Red Raiders. When the Geico Dance Cam came on the video board searching for enthusiastic fans to get everybody excited, Charles was ready to sit that one out.
Even DMX's "Party Up (Up In Here)" couldn't get Charles' dancing feet moving, he recalled.
"So my wife said, 'Charles, you need to go stand up and dance! How many opportunities do you get to go to a game like this and have some fun?'" he said.
Like the rest of us married men who subscribe to the theory A happy wife makes a happy life, Charles reluctantly got up and halfheartedly began to get his groove on.
In the meantime, the late Murphy Tinsley, who used to operate the field camera in the end zone and whose short attention span oftentimes took him away from the action on the field – particularly during blowouts – noticed Hayes dancing up in section 128 and zoomed in on him.
Once director Scott Bartlett, in the production truck, saw Hayes dancing on one of his monitors, he ordered Tinsley to keep on him even though Charles was only doing some of his B-moves that he usually starts out with during pep rallies and student assemblies.
Then, all of a sudden, there was large roar that took over the stadium. Hayes looked up at the video board and realized the applause was for him!
An immediate shot of adrenaline ran through his body.
"I'm thinking, 'This is pretty cool,'" Hayes said. "So I started turning it up a little bit and then I noticed the camera was stuck on me. That's when I pointed to the camera and started bringing out my best dance moves – some of my old-school moves!
"I did this one move where I had my hand in front of my face and moved it up and down and whenever I did that I changed the expression on my face," he said.
The fans loved it!
And so did the players. West Virginia scored 22 fourth-quarter points to come back and defeat the 24th-ranked Red Raiders, 46-35.
To Mountaineer fans, it wasn't Kliff Kingsbury's crappy game management skills nor his Swiss Cheese defense but rather the Dancing Man in section 128 that turned the game around.
It had to have been the Dancing Man!
"After that game, people kept reaching out to me saying, 'Your dancing was the reason we came back and won that game.' It's crazy how everyone felt that one moment changed the whole momentum of the game," he said.
Video of Hayes' dancing showed up on ESPN SportsCenter and soon Buckhannon had a new celebrity on its hands.
Even some of the adults in Buckhannon were starstruck.
"(The students) weren't really that surprised because at school we would have dance-offs during our pep rallies and I was always a part of those," Hayes said. "They loved that. But when I came back to school it was the teachers who were the ones saying, 'Hey, I saw you on ESPN!' They were the ones freaking out about it."
In one brief moment, Hayes had elevated himself to a category shared by just a handful of iconic fans to ever attend West Virginia University athletic events.
Of course, there was the dancing Mountaineer mascot, Junior Taylor. From the mid-1970s to many years after his tenure, Junior would sometimes take it upon himself to run out onto the floor during timeouts to get the crowd fired up when he felt things were getting a little stale.
A few years before Junior, we had the Frisbee Dog that kept the students distracted at old Mountaineer Field before the teams took the field, and many years before that, there was the hatchet-wielding "Chop 'em Down" who entertained the parents while at the same time scaring the hell out of their children.
More recently, the two dancing YMCA guys - Patrick "Mo" Daley in the mid-1990s and later Ryan Boyd in early 2000s - brought WVU fans to their feet during halftimes at the WVU Coliseum. The YMCA bit eventually ran its course when Boyd's dancing was deemed too risqué and his dissatisfaction with the refs was showing up more frequently in his routines.
So now we've moved on to the Dancing Man, Charles Hayes.
West Virginia's sports marketing whiz Nathaniel Zinn has an eye for talent and just like the Red Panda in the Coliseum, the Dancing Man is turning into his go-to performer whenever the stadium needs a little pick-me-up.
A few years ago during the TCU game, a dance-off was hastily arranged between Hayes and former WVU student Anderson Small. Their only instruction, according to Hayes, was to be ready to go at the end of the third quarter.
That one went viral and ended up on ESPN as well.
"The funny part is everyone thought we took a long period of time to plan that dance and actually we only talked about it for five minutes," Hayes explained. "We really didn't have anything scripted out – it was sort of off the top of our heads."
It began with Hayes walking across the aisle and bumping into Small just as the song comes on. After a little back and forth and some finger pointing, the two broke out into a dance-off.
The crowd went wild!
"We were told the whole thing was going to be just 20, 30 seconds so it had to be quick," Hayes said. "But after we did our little thing together and I looked at the big screen, I noticed we were still on it and the music was still going. For the next 40 seconds it was all freestyle and that was the cool part about it. We took something we had planned for five minutes and it turned into a legitimate freestyle dance and something so raw."
The Dancing Man was recently recruited by WVU Children's Medicine to help with one of their fundraisers and he danced to the tune of $10,000.
"That makes me feel good," he said.
And most recently, Hayes was asked to take part in a social media video the University produced of different famous people singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" that has since gone viral.
The Dancing Man can be seen in the video right there with Brad Paisley, Neal Brown, Jennifer Garner and E. Gordon Gee, among others!
"I didn't really understand what this involved until I saw the video and to actually be a part of that it kind of made me realize that I'm part of something that is much bigger than me," he said. "It was the coolest thing ever to be asked to do that."
It was cool.
It will also be cool to once again see Charles Hayes busting a move on a warm, autumn afternoon at Milan Puskar Stadium, bringing joy and happiness to all.
That's something we all can look forward to seeing!
The Dancing Man, of course, is Buckhannon's Charles Hayes, voted the "No. 1 Fan in the Land" in a recent Instagram contest. Just three years ago, West Virginia's top fan had never even been to a Mountaineer football game.
Who knew his first one would turn out the way it did?
Hayes was born in Orlando, Florida, and grew up in Ellicott City, Maryland, before attending West Virginia Wesleyan College, where he said he played a little football, baseball and did some cheerleading for the Bobcats.
Now an elementary school special needs teacher in Buckhannon, Hayes and his wife, Haley, were guests of family friends for West Virginia's game against Texas Tech on October 14, 2017.
That was his first time ever seeing the Mountaineers in person.
"We were pretty excited about the opportunity to go," Hayes recalled.
Hayes, unfamiliar with the surroundings at Milan Puskar Stadium and undeterred by West Virginia's lack of success against the Red Raiders, was enjoying himself and trying to boost the spirits of those around him even as Texas Tech kept scoring touchdown after touchdown.
By the end of the third quarter, however, he was getting a little gassed just like those Mountaineer defensive players down on the field who were chasing the Red Raiders. When the Geico Dance Cam came on the video board searching for enthusiastic fans to get everybody excited, Charles was ready to sit that one out.
Even DMX's "Party Up (Up In Here)" couldn't get Charles' dancing feet moving, he recalled.
"So my wife said, 'Charles, you need to go stand up and dance! How many opportunities do you get to go to a game like this and have some fun?'" he said.
Like the rest of us married men who subscribe to the theory A happy wife makes a happy life, Charles reluctantly got up and halfheartedly began to get his groove on.
In the meantime, the late Murphy Tinsley, who used to operate the field camera in the end zone and whose short attention span oftentimes took him away from the action on the field – particularly during blowouts – noticed Hayes dancing up in section 128 and zoomed in on him.Once director Scott Bartlett, in the production truck, saw Hayes dancing on one of his monitors, he ordered Tinsley to keep on him even though Charles was only doing some of his B-moves that he usually starts out with during pep rallies and student assemblies.
Then, all of a sudden, there was large roar that took over the stadium. Hayes looked up at the video board and realized the applause was for him!
An immediate shot of adrenaline ran through his body.
"I'm thinking, 'This is pretty cool,'" Hayes said. "So I started turning it up a little bit and then I noticed the camera was stuck on me. That's when I pointed to the camera and started bringing out my best dance moves – some of my old-school moves!
"I did this one move where I had my hand in front of my face and moved it up and down and whenever I did that I changed the expression on my face," he said.
The fans loved it!
And so did the players. West Virginia scored 22 fourth-quarter points to come back and defeat the 24th-ranked Red Raiders, 46-35.
To Mountaineer fans, it wasn't Kliff Kingsbury's crappy game management skills nor his Swiss Cheese defense but rather the Dancing Man in section 128 that turned the game around.
It had to have been the Dancing Man!
"After that game, people kept reaching out to me saying, 'Your dancing was the reason we came back and won that game.' It's crazy how everyone felt that one moment changed the whole momentum of the game," he said.
Video of Hayes' dancing showed up on ESPN SportsCenter and soon Buckhannon had a new celebrity on its hands.
SO CLOSE TO COLLEGE FOOTBALL THAT YOU CAN FEEL IT
— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) August 22, 2019
(via @WVUfootball) pic.twitter.com/RTrNSfIecI
Even some of the adults in Buckhannon were starstruck.
"(The students) weren't really that surprised because at school we would have dance-offs during our pep rallies and I was always a part of those," Hayes said. "They loved that. But when I came back to school it was the teachers who were the ones saying, 'Hey, I saw you on ESPN!' They were the ones freaking out about it."
In one brief moment, Hayes had elevated himself to a category shared by just a handful of iconic fans to ever attend West Virginia University athletic events.
Of course, there was the dancing Mountaineer mascot, Junior Taylor. From the mid-1970s to many years after his tenure, Junior would sometimes take it upon himself to run out onto the floor during timeouts to get the crowd fired up when he felt things were getting a little stale.
A few years before Junior, we had the Frisbee Dog that kept the students distracted at old Mountaineer Field before the teams took the field, and many years before that, there was the hatchet-wielding "Chop 'em Down" who entertained the parents while at the same time scaring the hell out of their children.
More recently, the two dancing YMCA guys - Patrick "Mo" Daley in the mid-1990s and later Ryan Boyd in early 2000s - brought WVU fans to their feet during halftimes at the WVU Coliseum. The YMCA bit eventually ran its course when Boyd's dancing was deemed too risqué and his dissatisfaction with the refs was showing up more frequently in his routines.
So now we've moved on to the Dancing Man, Charles Hayes.
West Virginia's sports marketing whiz Nathaniel Zinn has an eye for talent and just like the Red Panda in the Coliseum, the Dancing Man is turning into his go-to performer whenever the stadium needs a little pick-me-up.
A few years ago during the TCU game, a dance-off was hastily arranged between Hayes and former WVU student Anderson Small. Their only instruction, according to Hayes, was to be ready to go at the end of the third quarter.
That one went viral and ended up on ESPN as well.
"The funny part is everyone thought we took a long period of time to plan that dance and actually we only talked about it for five minutes," Hayes explained. "We really didn't have anything scripted out – it was sort of off the top of our heads."
It began with Hayes walking across the aisle and bumping into Small just as the song comes on. After a little back and forth and some finger pointing, the two broke out into a dance-off.
The crowd went wild!
"We were told the whole thing was going to be just 20, 30 seconds so it had to be quick," Hayes said. "But after we did our little thing together and I looked at the big screen, I noticed we were still on it and the music was still going. For the next 40 seconds it was all freestyle and that was the cool part about it. We took something we had planned for five minutes and it turned into a legitimate freestyle dance and something so raw."
The Dancing Man was recently recruited by WVU Children's Medicine to help with one of their fundraisers and he danced to the tune of $10,000.
"That makes me feel good," he said.
And most recently, Hayes was asked to take part in a social media video the University produced of different famous people singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" that has since gone viral.
The Dancing Man can be seen in the video right there with Brad Paisley, Neal Brown, Jennifer Garner and E. Gordon Gee, among others!
"I didn't really understand what this involved until I saw the video and to actually be a part of that it kind of made me realize that I'm part of something that is much bigger than me," he said. "It was the coolest thing ever to be asked to do that."
It was cool.
It will also be cool to once again see Charles Hayes busting a move on a warm, autumn afternoon at Milan Puskar Stadium, bringing joy and happiness to all.
That's something we all can look forward to seeing!
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