Hilarious dance-off on volleyball court between friendly opponents captures the spirit of sportsmanship

Editor's note: This article was originally published on February 2, 2023. It has since been updated.

Sports is not just about winning and losing but also the beautiful relationships between teammates and often with the rival team as well. The spirit of sportsmanship allows everyone to be in a safe and fair game where every player values another. A beautiful display of this was seen in a moment of friendly rivalry between two players in a volleyball match. The sweet yet hilarious video was posted on Reddit by u/shamansufi and has gathered almost 30k upvotes.

The video starts with a player dancing to the music in the middle of the game. She continues to display all her dance moves in front of the spectators and her team enthusiastically cheers her on. She turns and twists to the tunes as her teammates clap for her. However, a player from the rival team decides to have some fun of her own. She mockingly repeated the other player's dance moves in the most hilarious ways possible. She throws her hands and tries to copy her dance moves and everyone laughs along. This moment was extremely special as this friendly rivalry kept everyone energized and took the pressure of winning off their backs. 

Reddit user u/sandeulbaram revealed that the player in blue is Kim Yeon-koung and they both are close friends. They added, "She marks as the no.1 in women's volleyball player ranking and she's also the former captain of South Korean [team] who had single-handedly carried the whole team on her back. When the team was doing great, she let other players shine and when the team was doing bad, she took all the blame." They further said, "She's the leader everyone loves and looks up to. She's like your big sister who is playfully mischievous and messes with you a lot but you know she's the one you can count on when you're in trouble." 

Another user u/bbuckl1 said, "The girl in the dark uniform is known to be a trickster and funny like that. She’s on Netflix’s Korea No. 1 if you wanna check out her type of humor." While some people thought that the mocking was not okay several people clarified that it is just a part of Korean culture. Reddit user u/NEW_BEING_NEWBIE said, "In Korea, people usually don’t even try to be sarcastic or make fun of someone seriously in public situations like this. But they can make fun of each other (as long as it doesn’t go too far) if they are close friends and everyone else accepts it as a light joke considering the context and background info that they know about them." They added, "If Koreans really hate each other, they just pretend as if there were no problem at all in public situations and then go gossip each other behind the scene, trying to undermine the social reputation of his/her enemy. And as far as I know, these two are really close friends."

Nonetheless, this hilarious and heartwarming moment is the best example of sportsmanship and friendship.