Athens, GA
Divaad Wilson won’t let a full-leg brace and a pair of crutches stop him for busting out his dance moves.
The Georgia freshman defensive back suffered a torn ACL on March 24 but was moving about to a new dance tune two weeks later. Wilson stood in his dorm room and hopped around on one leg, which invoked a dance challenge performed and shared publicly across the country.
Wilson started his routine by taking a bite of food. He then glided to-and-from the camera – on one foot – in a vertical direction. He accompanied the dance with a number of intense arm gestures that precisely followed the song's beat.
With over 7,100 Instagram views and 1,600 Twitter likes, the recovering defensive back brought a jolt of energy by way of a dancing craze.
“I just can’t stop laughing,” senior cornerback Deandre Baker said.
Added Georgia basketball junior Tyree Crump in an Instagram comment: “Boy you krazy.”
Wilson has been displaying his dancing prowess for quite a while. It started prior to his senior season at Miami (Florida) Northwestern High School with his former teammate and cousin Ronald Delancy III. The two were at the Pylon 7-on-7 regional showcase and decided to bust out the moves.
There was no prior conversation between the two, but it came naturally as they wanted to get the day started with some flash.
“We just had to get our team hype, you know,” Delancy said. “We couldn’t be flat out there.”
From that moment, a tradition was born and it continued throughout the season in the Miami Northwestern locker room.
Wilson then brought it to Georgia. He wasted little time showing off a unique personality when arriving on campus as an early enrollee. Along with posing like rapper Kodak Black for his campus identification photo, he regularly shared his dance routines, which were accompanied by electronic music tracks.
It’s what the freshman has become known for amongst his peers at Georgia. Crump recently posted a video to Instagram in which he randomly started playing music as he approached Wilson at the Rankin M. Smith Academic Center. Naturally, Wilson waved his left crutch in the air, moving his arms and upper body to the tune.
“Divaad is a character and interesting guy,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said. “He’s been doing that for a long time and throughout our recruiting process. It has a lot of gyrations, and I don’t know exactly what that dance is, but I know down in South Florida, it means something. I better learn how to do it if I want to keep recruiting down there.”
Smart, jokingly, even asked to see if he could join in on the fun.
“Can you teach me to do that?” Smart asked Wilson.
“It’d probably take too long,” Wilson responded.
There may not be a video of Smart and Wilson dancing together soon, but the Bulldogs’ head coach likes it and so does the team.
Georgia was quickly impressed by Wilson, but he went down with the major knee injury in the early stages of spring practice. Wilson is progressing well in rehab and has returned to team meetings, according to Smart, but is in the beginning stages of recovery.
“I guarantee you that what he’s doing in those dance videos, he plays the same way,” defensive lineman Jonathan Ledbetter said. “He’s an electric player and I can’t wait to see him out there again.”
Back in Miami, Wilson’s progress and choreographed moves are being closely followed. It raises this question among his former high school teammates. Who is the better dancer?
“Me or Divaad? Me, absolutely,” said Delancy, who had his dance video of the same song as Wilson go widespread on Twitter with over 1,400 likes. “I’ve got more moves than him. I can jump higher, too.”
Another former teammate gave the nod to Wilson.
“He is by far the best dancer in Miami,” Miami Northwestern offensive lineman Mark Fox said.
This story was originally published April 26, 2018 2:13 PM.