A Minnesota high school principal is apologizing for a pep rally prank in which the captains of the school's sports teams were tricked into locking lips with their own parents.

The athletes were blindfolded at the winter pep fest and told they would be kissed by a special someone, presumably a fellow student. Instead, they were kissed by their own parents, who were not blindfolded.

The prank was filmed and uploaded to YouTube, where various versions of the video had over 33,000 hits as of Friday morning.

Some of the kisses in the video lasted for several seconds; the footage shows one pair kissing and rolling around on the ground.

One student, still blindfolded, was asked if he knew who had kissed him, and responded that his "special someone" had "luscious lips."

After receiving about a dozen complaints from people inside and outside the district, John Wollersheim, the high school's principal, apologized for the prank.

"This activity was intended to be fun, but some found it offensive," he wrote in a statement released Tuesday. "We apologize to anyone who was offended by this activity."

Wollersheim told the Associated Press that the kissing prank was a version of a similar activity the school had orchestrated without controversy six years ago.

Gawker dubbed the activity an "incest prank" and CityPages said it would lead to "thousands of hours of therapy for the students involved."

Wollersheim, however, has not received complaints from the student athletes or their parents, the Associated Press reported.

He said he had received both positive and negative feedback in emails from those who had viewed the video.

"I think people need to have more of a sense of humor!" one parent wrote to Wollersheim. "Kudos to you for all that you do - as I do not feel as a parent there was anything offensive about the video."

For others, the video was an example of the school teaching students poor values.

"What can possibly be the justification for ridiculing students and their parents in pseudo sexual manner!" one person wrote in an email. "What are we telling students if this sort of thing is not only condoned by the administration but blatantly encouraged?"