Prep Rally - High School

After receiving a third seed in the sectional tournament when he felt his team deserved a No. 1 seed, Hanford (Calif.) High girls basketball coach Tom Parrish refused to show up for regionals, so tourney officials left his team out of the postseason competition entirely.

"I'm pissed off," Parrish told The Fresno Bee in the days after his team's 57-39 Division I Central Section semifinal loss to No. 2 West Clovis (Fresno, Calif.) High last week. "I've got cameras stuck in my face and I say, 'I'm not going.'"

Despite the blowout loss, Parrish's Bullpups (23-5) still would have earned an invite to the Southern California Div. I regional tournament, scheduled to begin on Wednesday.

"Absolutely," Central Section Commissioner Jim Crichlow told The Fresno Bee. "And, who knows? Probably as a five, six or seven seed."

Ouch.

In other words, Parrish cost Hanford a home game in the regional tournament, where his team has made an appearance each of the previous seven seasons, according to The Bee.

Several attempts were made to rectify Parrish's mistake. Hanford athletic director Beau Hill offered to coach the team and Parrish then said he would reluctantly do his job, but both proved too late. Under the impression that Parrish and the Bullpups would not show up to play, Crichlow & Co. left them out altogether.

Hill made a last-ditch effort on Monday morning to get Hanford inserted as the No. 16 seed behind the other 15 teams that made up the SoCal bracket, but Crichlow's ensuing call to state officials again came too late, according to The Bee.

[Also: Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris, is now a varsity high school cheerleader]

Sadly, Parrish's actions effectively ended the career of Gonzaga-bound Bayli McClard and two other seniors on the Bullpups roster. Instead, the No. 29 ranked wing in the nation, according to ESPN HoopGurlz, McClard concluded her career with 1,795 points, which leaves her fourth in school history, section historian Bob Barnett told The Bee.

As for Parrish, who has racked up a record of 197 wins in 244 games at Hanford, he told the paper he probably won't return as coach next season and would decided on his future over the next couple months. "I'm not dealing with it anymore," he said.

Perhaps the same goes for Hill and the rest of the Bullpups girls basketball community.

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College basketball video from Yahoo! Sports:

It was one of the wildest finishes in recent Massachusetts high school basketball history. No one is debating that. What they’re arguing over is whether it should have included an overtime, and how officials could have refrained from a call that would have at least provided a talented sharp shooter with a chance to reach that extra period.

As reported by the MetroWest Daily News, Shrewsbury (Mass.) St. John’s High edged Northborough (Mass.) Algonquin Regional High in the Division I Central sectional semifinals by a score of 52-51. With 10 seconds remaining, St. John’s held a 49-48 lead, so it’s perhaps little surprise that they emerged victorious. Yet they caught a major break on the final shot of the game, when Algonquin star Brad Canova drilled a three from the left side of the court and was absolutely clobbered on the follow through.

You can see Canova being run into in the video above. There’s little question that the unspecified St. John’s defender ran into him like a Mac truck after he had released his shot. The question is whether that warranted a foul (it sure looks like it did).

Perhaps this is the best point for an important side discussion first raised by USA Today's Scott Allen: What in the world is St. John's doing guarding three-pointers like mad men when they have a four-point lead? This makes absolutely no sense. If nothing else, one would reason that it might have made the referees a bit more likely to call a foul than not call one (due to the aggressiveness of the defense).

Of course, if a foul had been called Canova would have received a chance to tie the game at the free throw line with a second or less remaining. Instead, he and his teammates had to watch St. John’s celebrate a sectional playoff upset (Algonquin was the region’s top seed, after all) which they never even had a chance to avoid at the buzzer.

"It's not worth commenting on the officials,” Algonquin head coach Brian Doherty told the Daily News. “It is what it is. I can't change it. They know what they did and I can't change it, so hey, let’s move on. I've got a video I'm going to show them.

"The kids played very well and they never gave up. Obviously it would have been nice to get a better result. I feel bad for the seniors and the kids that are in the locker room, but we had a heck of a year."

In the end, Doherty and his charges had no one to blame for their setback but themselves. St. John’s jumped out to a massive 20-point lead in the third quarter before the Tomahawks came roaring back. The record books will show that their comeback came up just short, though Canova and his teammates could make a pretty compelling case that an asterisk might belong next to the final score.

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In one of the most disturbing revelations in recent prep sports history, it has emerged that a Nebraska football coach who was suspended for running up the score during games had previously not been disciplined for a series of much more heinous actions: Sexual misconduct with teenage girls at the school.

As reported by the Omaha World Herald, Omaha (Neb.) Nathan Hale Middle School teacher and football coach Shad Knutson was suspended from his position after a student told her mother of Knutson’s brazen and disgusting advances toward her during school. According to the unnamed middle school minor in question, Knutson touched her breasts over her shirt twice and also stuck his pen in his crotch and dared the girl to grab it.

Clearly those actions are worthy of immediate dismissal and further prosecution. Yet, in Knutson’s case they also uncovered two prior allegations of abuse that apparently went unreported and unpunished, with Omaha Public Schools instead refraining from disciplining the coach because of “lack of credibility” among the accusers.

The World Herald goes into much more detail about the disturbing allegations against Knutson, but suffice it to say that the coach is accused of going far, far beyond anything that could be considered safe or reasonable from a teacher.

Still, the truly sad irony about Knutson’s case is that his principal stepped forward to suspend him for something far more trivial than sexual misconduct: running up the score in a football game. The World Herald reported that Nathan Hale athletic director Anthony Clark-Kazmarek banned the coach from the team’s final game in 2009 season after watching the Nathan Hale squad run up the score in the campaign’s penultimate contest.

If only Clark-Kazmarek or any other OPS official had acted more forcefully when the first allegations of impropriety emerged against Kazmarek, perhaps at least one other teen might not be scarred by the horrendous alleged actions perpetrated on her by one of the teacher’s she expected to safeguard her.

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You probably haven’t heard the name Jonathan Semerene unless you are a true recruiting junkie. After all, there aren’t too many people who keep close tabs on place kickers.

Yet Semerene is definitely worth a close look, as he proved by drilling a 70-yard field goal while training with kicking coach Brandon Kornblue, as initially dug up by USA Today. Yes, 70 yards. If that went through in a game, Semerene would be the new national record holder for a field goal at any level.

Somewhere, even Washington resident and 67-yard field goal maker Austin Rehkow is impressed.

Given the strength of his right leg, there is absolutely no reason to believe that he couldn’t deliver that kind of a blast in a game during his senior season. The Weston (Fl.) Cypress Bay placekicker clearly plans on competing in college, yet he hasn’t received any officials scholarship offers as of yet.

We should all expect that to change in the days ahead, if the full range of his made field goals are taken into consideration. In one session, Semerene connected successfully from 70, 67, 65, 55, 50, 40 and 30 yards. What was that phrase Peyton Manning said when Adam Viniatieri trotted out on to the field to earn the Colts a win?

Money. Clearly, Semerene is working toward that track. Based on this training reel, he sure seems to be on the right track.

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College basketball video from Yahoo! Sports:

One of the most prestigious schools in New York City is embroiled in an unseemly controversy after three members of the school’s lauded track and field team were charged as adults with four disturbing counts per person related to truly troubling allegations of sexually abusive hazing of a younger teammate.

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

As reported by CBS 2 New York, NBC New York and a handful of other sources, three members of the track team at the Bronx (N.Y.) School of Science were charged with forcible touching, assault, hazing in the second degree and harassment in relation to allegations of hazing perpetrated upon one of their younger teammates. All three of the athletes in question will be tried as adults, meaning that they could receive time behind bars for their actions.

The three teenagers in question are 17-year-old Pier Berkmans, 16-year-old Boubacar Diallo and Thomas Brady, also 16. All three are members of the Bronx School of Science varsity track team, as is the alleged victim.

With an investigation ongoing, all activities related to the school’s track and field team have been suspended until more is known about what truly went on. The Department of Education is handling the investigation and has determined that no meets will be attended by the School of Science team until that investigation is complete, meaning that there is a chance the team’s entire spring season could be eliminated.

Meanwhile, the school’s athletic director and two of its track and field coaches have been suspended until the aforementioned investigation is completed. More disturbingly, the New York Daily News has reported that the athletic director, Marion Dietrich, knew about the team's culture of hazing and even sent an email about it to parents in spring 2012, yet did little to formally stifle it from happening again.

While nothing will be certain until the full due process of a formal investigation is completed, the allegations against the three teenagers are disturbing indeed.

According to CBS New York, the victim endured a series of sexual assaults that began in December, when one of the defendants told him, “You need a good fingering, you freshman,” and then penetrated his buttocks through his clothing. As the attacks increased in frequency and intensity, they later included threats of rape unless the freshman allowed the older boys to touch him sexually and an incident where he was held down to the ground and sexually assaulted.

In that particular incident, the victim allegedly told his attackers that they were hurting him only to receive a reply of, “don’t resist, we won’t hurt you.”

While the full investigation into the boys’ actions is ongoing, the parents of at least one of the teens accused in the attacks are standing up for their son’s reputation.

“He’s a good kid, and we are sure as his parents,” Yekaterina Berkmans, mother of Piers Berkmans, told the press. “He is someone incapable of doing the dirty things he is accused of.”

All will hope that is true because if it isn’t, Berkmans and his teammates need serious help.

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There's something remarkable going on in Newtown, Conn. Just a day after the town's boys basketball team pulled off one of the biggest upsets in recent Connecticut basketball tournament history, the school's hockey team duplicated the feat, earning a stunning spot in the state quarterfinals as a result.

As reported by the Milford-Orange Bulletin, Newtown (Ct.) High, seeded 17th in the CIAC's Division II state tournament, knocked off the state's No. 1 overall seed, Amity (Ct.) High. The Nighthawks emerged with a 2-1 victory thanks to goals by Evan Isaacs and Hayden Savoia.

More impressive was the fact that Newtown won the game just one night after earning a victory in the state playoff qualifier (an 8-6 goal fest against Conrad (Ct.) High) on the road.

“We are in disbelief right now,” Amity coach Gary Lindgren told the Bulletin. “The kids played their hearts out. We had good control in the first period but we only got the one goal. We had the opportunities. We just did not cash in.”

They didn't cash in because Newtown goalie Patrick McLoughlin played a truly inspired game. McLoughlin saved 14 shots on goal in the first period alone ... and that was the only stretch in which he gave up a goal. From there out, the netminder was a brick wall, keeping his team in the game until Isaacs and Savoia delivered the game turning goals across a period of just four minutes.

Now, one of the goal scorers himself is confident that the Nighthawks can keep building off the stunning victory.

“We can ride this momentum,” Savoia told the Bulletin. “Like one of our former captains said to us, the best thing we can do after the [Sandy Hook] tragedy is to give everyone something to cheer for. I think we did that.”

They did indeed, and for the second night Newtown could be excited and proud about what happened in a sporting event, helping distract everyone from the tough rebuilding that still remains ahead.

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Greater Sacramento is mourning a beloved track and field and freshman football coach who died suddenly in truly horrific circumstances after he rode his bike into a metal gate.

As reported by the Sacramento Bee, 59-year-old Sacramento (Ca.) Rio Linda High track and field coach and multimedia teacher Marion Adams was pronounced dead on Tuesday shortly after he accidentally impaled himself with a metal swing gate that opened up the school’s parking lot. Adams was reportedly riding away from his team’s morning practice on his bike when he briefly looked behind him to say goodbye to a student.

By the time he turned around, Adams could do little but brace for the impact of the metal fence arm into his body. While the coach was immediately rushed to nearby Mercy San Juan hospital, two surgeries to treat a bevy of internal injuries suffered in the collision could not save his life.

According to those who knew the coach well, he was one of the school’s most colorful personalities, often wearing Mickey Mouse ears in school halls.

"Marion was the most popular and nicest man on campus; just a great guy," Mike Morris, the varsity football coach and athletic director at Rio Linda told the Bee. "It's a huge loss, devastating to our community. He's an example of how great Rio Linda is as a school and community. He couldn't wait to come back here. This place meant everything to him."

Indeed, according to Adams’ brother, David Adams, the tragically departed coach left a much higher paying job to return to Rio Linda because he held such a deep love for his alma mater.

That appreciation was clearly reciprocated by a school community that flocked to Mercy San Juan hospital while the coach fought for his life, clogging halls and waiting for any good news.

Sadly, reassuring words never came, though David Adams said doctors reported that he fought much harder than most patients who suffered such a wound would have. That has left Adams’ family, both in a literal and figurative sense at Rio Linda, to mourn his passing far too soon.

"I know people say this a lot about people, that they're great when we lose them, but Marion Adams was a wonderful man and teacher,” Terry Ray, the Rio Linda boys basketball coach told the Bee.

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When Paris Jackson turned up as a varsity cheerleader for Sherman Oaks (Ca.) Buckley's School, Prep Rally -- as well as many of our most most intrepid readers -- seemed to be both genuinely surprised and heartened.

Surprised because, wow, it's remarkable that Paris Jackson is already a bona fide teenager, heartened because she is apparently engaging in exactly what so many who have gone before he have done. She's cheering for her school, and seems to be pretty happy doing so.

That's great, because as everyone knows, Jackson hasn't had the most everyday or easy of childhoods. Yet if she does go on to have the future she envisions for herself, replete with starring roles on the big screen, she'll join a pretty strong cadre of Hollywood's grande dames -- not to mention a few other luminaries -- as those who took star turns after first getting their kicks while cheering for their alma mater.

Who's on that list? Well, thanks to our partners at Snakkle, we can tell you ... and show off what they looked like when they were in action in high school.

First up? The lovely Blake Lively, who you see pictured above. As for the rest, including a couple you probably didn't see coming, their identities are pretty clear when seen in split screen. Make sure to check out the entire list at Snakkle to see who is most surprising yourself.

And without being too much of a spoiler, make sure to check out one particular ex-Desperate Housewife.

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More news from the Yahoo! Sports Minute:

When Prep Rally first covered Lacy Asdourian, she was turning heads as the only girl on a boys basketball team in the state of California. More notably, she was helping push Redding (Ca.) Liberty Christian School toward the state playoffs.

Now that Liberty Christian is competing in those very playoffs, Asdourian has earned a spot in the state record books, allegedly becoming the first girl to ever score in a boys playoff basketball game in the nation's most populous state.

As reported by MaxPreps, which has been in front of Asdourian’s feats throughout her junior season, the Liberty Christian junior scored a single free throw during Liberty’s 67-55 victory against Ripon (Ca.) Christian High in the California Interscholastic Federation’s Division V Northern California Regional playoffs.

According to MaxPreps, a CIF spokesman could not confirm that Asdourian was the first girl to score in a boys playoff game with concrete certainty, but did say that the two outlets that compile state records had absolutely no notes of past female players scoring in a boys playoff game.

For his part, Asdourian’s coach said that what she accomplished was nothing short of a historical breakthrough in women’s basketball.

"It may have been historical in regards to women being able to play in the man's game," [Liberty Christian girls basketball coach Todd] Franklin said.

The victory moves Liberty on to a contest against Alameda (Ca.) St. Joseph Notre Dame High on Saturday. Asdourian will be looking to score there, too, although she is certainly would be even happier to escape with another victory, regardless of her personal contributions.

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We know that headline hold an awful lot in it. We promise the 47 second video below will deliver on all its promise.

The player throwing down the insane 360 dunk in the video you see above, as sent in to Prep Rally by the good folks at iHigh, is Nino Jackson, a player at Columbus (Ga.) Kingdom Prep, a postgrad institution aimed at helping its students land at a Division I program. Jackson spent his four traditional high school years in Oklahoma, competing for Ardmore (Ok.) High while hoping to earn attention from any Division I recruiters.

Of course, as anyone who has eaten at Catfish Corner in Jackson's hometown will tell you, it isn't the kind of city that gets a whole lot of Division I recruiting traffic. Hence Jackson's postgrad year at Kingdom Prep, where he recently led the Lions to the NACA national championship, despite finishing the national final with just four players.

You can see a full replay of the Kingdom Prep-Covington game right here or you can check out more highlights from Jackson right here.

In fact, Jackson's athleticism is a big part of the reason that Kingdom Prep eventually emerged with a victory against Covington (Ky.) High to earn the NACA crown. Unlike most teams, Kingdom Prep competed at the national tourney with just five players.

Of course, because of talented players of Jackson's ilk, playing with just five on a roster isn't necessarily prohibitive to a program's success ... provided that the squad avoids getting into foul trouble.

When foul trouble does set in Kingdom Prep finds itself in a heck of a lot of trouble. Incredibly, that happened during the second half of the tourney matchup against Covington, with one of the team's defacto starters fouling out with 4 minutes remaining, leaving the Lions with just four able players on the court.

It was during that 4x5 spell that Jackson essentially co-opted the spotlight with the slam and subsequent rejection that you see above, leading the Lions to the promised land, and perhaps finally earning himself enough attention to land a scholarship at a major Division I program.

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A girls basketball star in Massachusetts has sparked a new level of debate in concussions when she and her coach claimed that she was accused of suffering from a concussion by an opponent’s trainer while she was actually fine, costing her team a shot at a deep run in the state tournament.

As first reported by the Boston Herald, Boston (Ma.) New Mission High girls basketball star DeAndra Humphries was poked in the face by a player from Shawsheen (Ma.) Regional High during New Mission’s surprise 57-55 loss in an early round Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association tournament game. While Humphries had to go to the bench early in the fourth quarter to deal with the minor injury that resulted from receiving a stern finger in the face, she insists that she was always fully conscious and aware of what was going on around her.

That was contrary to the opinion of the Shawsheen athletic trainer, who was serving as the trainer for the game and determined that Humphries had a concussion and was unsafe to continue in the game.

“I started crying when they told me I had a concussion because I knew I didn’t have one,” Humphries told the Herald. “They asked me if I was all right and I said yes. They asked me if I knew where I was and I told them. They had me stick out my tongue and move my eyeballs around and did that. They then asked if the light was hurting me and I told them no.

“I just couldn’t believe they wouldn’t let me back in the game.”

At the time, New Mission held an eight-point advantage. With Humphries relegated to the bench, Shawsheen marched all the way back to escape with a two-point victory.

New Mission athletic director Cory McCarthy was quick to challenge the final result, arguing that his team was actively swindled out of a likely victory by the elimination of its star play via the most duplicitous means possible. Humphries had already scored 11 points at the time of her alleged non-concussion, and was exerting a significant influence on the game.

Yet the MIAA gave short shrift to New Mission’s complaint, instead siding with Shawsheen and its trainer with a rather curt statement.

“We’re not about to question the judgment of a qualified trainer on the scene at the time,” MIAA spokesman Paul Wetzel told the Herald. “As far as we are concerned, the game is over.”

So is New Mission’s season, even if it shouldn’t be, and that isn’t fair to Humphries or any of her teammates, coaches or fans.

Want more on the best stories in high school sports? Visit RivalsHigh or connect with Prep Rally on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

It was all over. Hugo (Okla.) High was on the verge of a significant upset in the Oklahoma High School Activities Association state playoffs. They led state power Millwood (Okla.) High, 37-36, with just 2.9 seconds left. All they needed to do was inbounds the ball and dribble out the clock.

The Buffaloes inbounded the ball to star Trey Johnson. What happened next caught everyone, even Johnson himself, off guard.

As first reported by The Oklahoman, instead of dribbling out the clock, a discombobulated Johnson swiveled and scored on his own basket with an uncontested layup. The ball slipped through the net just as the buzzer sounded, giving Millwood the most unlikely of all 38-37 victories and a spot in the Class 3A state semifinals.

“When I saw the kid going that way, I was like, ‘No, he's not. No, he's not ... Oh, yes he is,'” Millwood assistant coach David Samilton told the Oklahoman. "I couldn't believe it.”

The scene that followed was truly surreal, again as described by the Oklahoma City-based newspaper.

Hugo's raucous crowd went still. Millwood's previously disheartened group of fans took a moment for reassurance, before breaking out in a wild celebration fit for this unlikely of an escape job.

As one might expect, Johnson and his teammates were inconsolable with Hugo coach Darnell Shanklin saying that the team’s postgame gathering was “the toughest locker room I've ever had to talk to.”

While there is little time for Millwood to ruminate on its startling turn of luck -- it returns to action on Saturday in the semifinals -- Hugo will have plenty of time to look back and wonder where the gaffe ranks in the pantheon of unfortunate late-game moves.

The good news for Johnson is that the unfortunate, unintentional buzzer beater probably won’t ever surpass Chris Webber’s timeout. The bad news is that there aren’t too many other plays that would go before it.

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College basketball video Yahoo! Sports:

Say this for Troy Hennum: Of all the disturbing, over the top ways in which a high school coach can get himself put on indefinite leave, the Washington softball head man was extremely original.

Unfortunately, Hennum's over-the-line moment was also apparently extremely perverse, which may soon end his time as a high school employee.

As reported by the Seattle Times, Hennum was put on indefinite leave as head coach of the Seattle (Wa.) Roosevelt High softball team in connection with disturbing allegations that he sent his players out on a “scavenger hunt” to find him dates. The coach allegedly told his players to “take photos of cute girls” and get their numbers so he could start a conversation with them.

Incredibly, the coach wasn’t joking around. His softball charges approached 21-year-old Katharine Aagard at a sporting goods store, snapped a picture of her and then convinced her to give them her number. Shortly after the teens relayed that info back to Hennum, he reached out to Aagard via text, as released to the Times.

“this is troy. The roosevelt softball coach. I had to see if your legit,” he wrote.

Aagard responded, and the two bantered over the course of a few hours.

She showed those messages to The Seattle Times

“Genius, great way to meet a girl, use my girls lol,” he wrote in another text, patting himself on the back for the scavenger hunt.

“Are you single? Or am I wasting my time,” he wrote in another message.

While Aagard said she initially felt flattered by the attention from the coach, she eventually felt creeped out by the coach’s strain of messages (rightfully so). After discussing the conversation with a friend, the college-aged text recipient reached out to Roosevelt High officials to alert them about the coach’s actions.

Needless to say, those officials were less than amused, with the school’s principal promising to immediately look into the matter, then placing the coach on indefinite unpaid leave. Incredibly, Hennum had officially been on the job just six days by the time he was disciplined for the disturbing “scavenger hunt.”

Yet equally disturbing is the fact that Hennum is no newcomer to questionable interactions with his players. As previously reported by the Kirkland Reporter, Hennum was investigated while he served as softball coach at Lake Washington (Wa.) High for inappropriate texting after he contacted a female student late at night on an overnight trip, asking her to come to his room.

At the time, the coach claimed that he was concerned about her because of “off-the-field issues.” Now, those issues seem to focus more on Hennum himself than the student.

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Oh, the confusing life of a high school mascot. On one hand, you’re charged with pumping up -- and celebrating major moments in turn. On the other hand, you’re still in high school student, all too attuned to the tender moments of heart breaking setbacks that are incumbent in everyone’s high school experience.

Case in point: The Batavia (N.Y.) High Blue Devil in the moments after his school’s miraculous game-winning buzzer beater in the New York Class B regional final.

As you can see in the video above, the Blue Devils escaped with a 63-62 victory against the state’s top ranked team, Olean (N.Y.) High, when traditional role player Jeff Redand scooped up a loose ball and launched a game-winning three as the buzzer sounded (editorial sidenote: What is it about this year’s New York basketball tournament? Wild buzzer beaters galore!). Quite understandably, the Olean squad was stunned by the sudden turn of events, with more than one Olean player falling to the floor while overcome with a mixture of shock and grief.

Contrasting that was the overwhelming crush of excitement near-rapture of the Batavia squad, and the scene displayed quite mélange of emotions.

Enter the Batavia Blue Devil. Not only did he have to run on to the court to celebrate with his hoop star classmates, he had to practically run over one of the downed Olean players to meet up with them.

Luckily, the Blue Devil found a way to make the best of the situation, briefly consoling the grief-stricken Olean player and then hopping on to the Batavia dog pile.

Add to that his fantastic Blue Devil costume -- face it, Duke fans, Batavia’s Munsters-inspired get up is far superior to his Cameron Indoor crowd-surfing cousin -- and the Batavia mascot, at least in his current iteration, really seems to have the whole mascot lifestyle experience down pat. While his personal consolation efforts may not have made the Olean player’s disappointment much easier to bear, it at least offered one more example of the humanity inherent in high school sports.

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More news from the Yahoo Sports Minute:

The Non-Public New Jersey Interscholastic Athletic Association semifinal between Delbarton (N.J.) School and Paramus (N.J.) Catholic School wasn’t particularly close. Delbarton flexed its superior skill, speed and strength to roll to a 10-1 victory en route to a state title face off against Ramsey (N.J.) Don Bosco High.

Perhaps strength was the most clear cut advantage in that group, as demonstrated ably by the total clear out in the video you see above.

As brought to Prep Rally’s attention by The Big Lead’s Stephen Douglas, the hit on that break was both legal and remarkably powerful. It’s unknown who the Paramus Catholic and Delbarton skaters in question are, but we do know that, fitting for the result, the Delbarton player was the one laying the timber.

What’s even more amazing than the ferocity of the hit is that it was completely legal; the Paramus Catholic skater rolled right into it. If nothing else, it will ensure that he starts working more on skating with his head up immediately.

Yet there could have been a few other ancillary benefits, too. After all, if the man moving up the ice had any kind of nasal congestion at the start of that break, he certainly didn’t by the time he was laying face down on the ice.

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Evidently there can be a silver lining to even the darkest cloud. After Hugo (Ok.) High basketball player Trey Johnson skyrocketed from obscurity to national fame for all the wrong reasons on Friday, his local pro team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, reached out to make sure that he wasn’t being too hard on himself in the aftermath of one blown play.

Then the Thunder did something that went a bit farther: They invited him to Sunday’s Thunder-Celtics game as an official guest of the team, giving him the chance to meet his basketball idols Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook … and pick up a pair of sweet kicks in the process.

As reported by The Oklahoman, Johnson -- who you probably remember got confused and scored a game-winning basket for an opponent in his own basket at the buzzer -- received a call from Thunder general manager Sam Presti on Friday, less than 24 hours after his discombobulated layup unintentionally eliminated Hugo from the postseason. The GM offered words of encouragement and then invited Johnson to Sunday’s Thunder home game.

When he got to the game, Johnson got the chance to hang out with the Thunder during the pregame shootaround. He then sat courtside for the game with Thunder ownership, and afterward walked away with some pretty special gifts: A signed Kevin Durant sneaker and the pair that Westbrook wore during Sunday’s victory against the Celtics, also signed, of course.

While there was plenty of obvious concern for Johnson’s mental well being following Thursday night’s gaffe, stories delving into his mental state since have uncovered nothing but reassuring vibes, from the junior's three-sport stardom and honor student track record at Hugo to the general impression he leaves with his peers and coaches.

“There's nothing that anybody can do or say that will change my opinion of him,” Hugo basketball coach Darnell Shanklin told The Oklahoman’s Jenni Carlson. “He's a great kid, tremendous talent, and he'll do wonderful, wonderful things.”

Now, he’ll get to do wonderful, wonderful things with some special signed shoes in his room. It may not be the same as a trip to the state semifinals, but it’s probably a nice consolation prize that Johnson never could have imagined he’d get at the start of the playoffs.

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Two cheerleaders at two different Arizona schools find themselves in criminal trouble for an action that seems like an outtake from the movie "Mean Girls"; they created a “hit list”, annotated with a gun, and posted it on the social media site Instagram.

As reported by AZCentral.com, a sophomore at Butte (Az.) Poston High and an eighth grader at Butte (Az.) Walker Elementary and Middle School posted a picture of a list that was titled **HIT LIST** with a pistol pictured just after the final asterisk.

Naturally, the photo set off alarm bells in the aftermath of the Newtown Sandy Hook tragedy, and the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office wasted no time in launching an investigation into the two teens.

Shortly after it learned of the list, the Florence Unified School District sent out an official statement addressing the incident and the disturbing contents of the list.

“Nine students who attend Poston Butte or Walker Butte and one teacher from Poston Butte were on the list,” the statement said. “Parents of all students concerned, those who created the list and those who were on it, have been or are currently being contacted.”

The girls maintained they did not intend to harm anyone on the list, [Pinal County Sheriff’s spokeman Tamra] Ingersoll said.

“Neither student has a history of disciplinary incidents,” the school district’s statement said. “However, all threats are taken very seriously, and both students will be suspended pending a hearing.”

According to AzFamily.com, the two cheerleaders were suspended for an unspecified time for publishing the list. As much as when they will return, the question now appears to be whether they will be allowed to return to the school at all. With potential criminal charges of threatening and intimidating in the offing, it may be some time before either is deemed safe to set foot in a public school again.

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Of all the strange pseudo-celebrities to come and go in the world of high school athletics, few can boast a more unique “talent” than Svetlana Pankratova. The former Russian women’s basketball player is now an assistant coach at Falls Church (Va.) George Mason High, but she’ll never be known for his skill as a hoops coach.

That’s because Pankratova has a much more distinct physical trait that dominates practically any and all conversations about her: She has the longest legs of any woman in history.

As reported by the Washington Post’s The State of NoVa blog, as well as BuzzFeed and other outlets, Pankratova married a Falls Church resident, Jack Gosnell, and took a position as an assistant coach at George Mason High, one of the state’s top girls basketball programs. The George Mason Mustangs were recently eliminated from the state playoffs in the semifinals.

If anything, being a girls basketball coach seems like a perfectly reasonable occupation for a woman who happens to be blessed with the world's longest legs, and Pankratova will be hoping to add to the Mustangs' history of success in Virginia with a strong basketball background that includes stints with the Russian national team and Virginia Commonwealth.

But enough about the team, right? Let’s talk about the legs. Officially, Pankratova’s legs stretch 4-feet-4, more than two-thirds of her 6-foot-5 frame. According to the Post, Pankratova first investigated the novelty of her leg length after a friend brought up the possibility that she might have the longest legs of all time.

That, apparently, was the easy part. From the moment of first investigation it took six years of documentation to confirm that Pankratova’s initial suspicion was correct: She does have the world’s longest female legs.

Now Pankratova uses those long limbs to help her teach teens how to play powerfully in the paint. Yet, no matter how successful she proves to be as a coach at the prep level, Pankratova will always have her Guinness record.

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The Aurora (Ore.) North Marion High school district is in the midst of a budget crunch, so they certainly didn’t have the funds needed to ramp up its stock of football helmets. That was a big problem for the North Marion football team, which didn’t have enough safe helmets to complete a full set.

While bemoaning this shortage of safe equipment, North Marion coach Doug Bilodeau joked that he was so desperate for new gear for his team that he would stand alongside a highway with a sign that reads “Will work for new helmets.” His daughter thought the idea was so funny that she actually made the sign, and Bilodeau was so touched by that gesture that he, in turn, took the sign out to the street and took a photo with it.

The now famed “Will Work for Helmets” photo landed on Facebook, and that in turn started what may be the most unusual fundraising drive for sports equipment in history. As reported by the Oregonian and Portland TV network KATU, no sooner than the coach had posted the photo than he was inundated by both donations and, fittingly, work orders from those who wanted to contribute to the program.

Hey, he did say “Will work for helmets,” right?

So far, the manual labor chores have only amounted to raking leaves at a number of apartments in exchange for one landlord’s donation of the money for one helmet, but Bilodeau and his players will take on all tasks if it helps them get the money they need to field a new squad’s worth of helmets in 2013.

“If someone has a project, we’ll get a group of kids to go do it,” Bilodeau told the Oregonian. “‘Work for helmets’ isn’t just a slogan. We put it into practice."

The team has already raised enough funds for five new helmets, with a goal of 30 by August. While he had no idea how it would happen just a month ago, Bilodeau now sounds confident that the team can reach its fundraising goal.

“I’ve got to find a way. Collect cans if I have to. I don’t want a kid not playing football because we don’t have the helmets,” Bilodeau said.

If Facebook has anything to do with it, Bilodeau won’t face that gut wrenching dilemma, all thanks to a familial joke about just how desperate he was to get new gear for his players.

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Paris Jackson earned national headlines in early March when photos and videos emerged showing her cheering for the Sherman Oaks (Ca.) Buckley School boys basketball team. She appeared to be excited and effervescent and, at least in attitude, everything a cheerleader should be.

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At the time, plenty of people chimed in saying they were thrilled to see Paris just being a regular teen, enjoying life while doing precisely what plenty of other 14-year-old girls want to. Now an NFL team has caught on, and they want her to considering cheering for them in the future.

As reported by Yahoo! via TV Guide and a host of other sources, Barbara Zaun, the cheerleading director for the Philadelphia Eagles, told TMZ that her squad was interested in adding Jackson to their group.

"We thought that she had a lot of poise, confidence and enthusiasm in her cheer performance," Zaun told the online gossip website. "Paris has that 'wow factor' that makes a great cheerleader.

"She is already very comfortable in the limelight, so we think she would definitely stand out and impress the judges. ... We hope that she will try out for the team and be an Eagles cheerleader!"

It's worth mentioning that the team isn't asking Jackson to move across country and start cheering for the Eagles this minute. After all, that would break child labor laws. Not to mention that putting a 14-year-old in the annual Eagles Cheerleader Lingerie Calendar might qualify as child pornography. Rather, the Eagles are encouraging the celebrity teen to try out and join the squad once she turns 18, after her senior year of high school.

Naturally, a lot can change in four years. It's impossible to know if Jackson will even still be interested in cheerleading come fall 2017. Still, the fact that an NFL squad is already reaching out to her in hopes of having her join in the future can only mean one of two things: A) Jackson really has a knack for this cheerleading thing, or B) Boy the Eagles are desperate for some positive press.

You decide which of those two motivations is more likely for the Eagles' outreach, and kudos to Jackson either way.

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