In 2011, Ghazaleh Sailors and Marti Sementelli made national news when they became the first two female pitchers to face off against each other in a prep baseball game. A year later, a Washington girl is proving that Southern California isn't the only place where females can make an impact while pitching overhand.

As profiled by the Bellevue Reporter and Seattle's KING-5 TV, Interlake (Wash.) High's recently eliminated Class 2A state playoff squad featured a talented pitching staff that included one particularly notable senior: Eleanor Worley.

Worley missed most of her final campaign — the only one spent on the Interlake varsity squad — but still got one notable start when she took the mound for Interlake's home finale against Juanita (Wash.) High. In that game, the teen who had showed plenty of moxie in rehabbing from arm struggles throughout the season pitched an impressive five innings, eventually departing after allowing just three runs and striking out a pair en route to earning what would be her lone varsity baseball victory.

"It really wasn't any different," Worley said of pitching in a varsity game. "I'm just focused on doing my job out there."

In fact, the only thing that may have been different was the treatment Worley received because of her hair. Unlike male players, Worley wears a braid that reaches her waist, and Juanita batters demanded that she tuck the hair into her jersey so it wouldn't be a distraction for batters.

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In the past two years, YouTube has brought the world great trick shot videos by quarterbacks from elementary school to college backup to the verge of the NFL. Yet all of those football trick shot films had one thing in common: They were showcasing quarterbacks.

Now, for the first time, an innovative young man has filmed a trick shot video for his own position, long snapper, and he has produced a true gem.

As featured on ESPN Boston and a variety of other sites, the video above was filmed by Cambridge (Mass.) Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School senior Nick DiChiara, who played football throughout his time at the school. Helped along most notably by BB&N teammate Eric Olson, DiChiara rattled off a series of trick snaps in the school locker room, in the gym, the parking lot, the baseball field and even Harvard Stadium.

Throughout it all, DiChiara celebrates successful trick snaps as if he's just body-slammed someone in a WWE ring. Let's face it: He has the hair to pull of just such a feat.

While DiChiara is trying to make his name as a wild long snapper, his football skill set goes far beyond snapping the ball over incredibly long distances. At BB&N, DiChiara played at wide receiver and linebacker, where he made a legitimate impact in the ISL.

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Sometimes it's important to remember that cheerleading can be a cruel and dangerous sport. There's ample proof of that in the video below.

To be fair, Prep Rally has no idea who the unfortunate cheerleader who happened to either A) kick herself in the head, or B) slip in untimely circumstances, actually was. What we do know is that the video that depicts her least glorious moment — and was brought to Prep Rally's attention by NBC blog Off the Bench — was uploaded to YouTube by a teenager named Natalie Mudd, who happens to be a student at Jefferson City (Mo.) Blair Oaks High.

Add to that the fact that the students in question have all the marks of being high schoolers working out at a high school field, and it's pretty safe to say that the video can serve as a historical document about the risks inherent in school spirit at the prep ranks.

Naturally, the most important concern is that the unfortunate cheerleader in question avoided any kind of a serious injury. Based on her reaction — and the fact that only her butt and elbow hit the ground with any force — it seems safe to say that she at least achieved that.

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When you're the nation's top football recruit, schools will do almost anything to get your signature on a letter of intent. They pull out all the stops during official visits. Somehow they seem to have someone present at all of the player's high school games. They call him on the phone as often as they legally can.

Then, some schools even go a step further, like the University of Georgia. When the Bulldogs needed to fill a vacancy for an on-campus recruiting coordinator, the Bulldogs passed over a variety of analysts in the recruiting space to hire a man who was most recently serving as the director of Under Armour football camps in the state, who happened to have one key prior role on his resume: He formerly coached the nation's top recruit, Loganville (Ga.) Grayson High defensive end Robert Nkemdiche, early in the top prospect's career.

To be fair, Daryl Jones, the man who landed the recruiter position, is a fully qualified candidate. Before taking the reins of Under Armour's Georgia prep operations, Jones coached at different schools for 17 years. That time certainly gave Jones ample opportunities to forge bonds with other schools across Georgia and the Southeast, from where UGA draws nearly all of its recruits.

Still, there is bound to be skepticism about Jones' appointment because of his relationship with Nkemdiche, an in-state recruit who might be the best prospect out of the state of Georgia in years. The 6-foot-5, 260-pound beast of a defensive lineman is considered a plug-and-play solution on the defensive line for any team with a hole, making him arguably the nation's most sought after 5-star recruit in the Class of 2013.

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With just three outs to go, Coon Rapids (Minn.) High appeared to be cruising to a victory against rival Osseo (Minn.) High. Two days later, Coon Rapids limped away with a loss having broken or come near a variety of state records in the process.

As reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Osseo eventually eked out a 6-5 victory against Coon Rapids in 19 innings, the final three of which were played two days after the original game ran out of sunlight after 16 tense innings.

By the time it was over, the regular-season matchup had spread across more than five hours of game time and set four state records: Most at-bats by a team (Osseo came to the plate a whopping 68 times), most at-bats by a player (six hitters batted nine times), most sacrifice bunts (Coon Rapids completed five) and most strikeouts by a player (an Osseo batter tied the state mark with five Ks).

When the teams met to conclude the original game two days after it was postponed by darkness, both squads had to honor their original lineups, including all of the pitching and position switches that had come before darkness fell. That made things rather interesting.

Fitting for the drama that preceded it, when the game finally did reach its final frame, Coon Rapids loaded the bases with just one out in the bottom of the 19^th only to end the game by hitting into a double play.

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A controversy has erupted in Texas over a softball play on which a seemingly impossible feat occurred: An umpire appeared to rule a runner safe and out on the same play, and he never changed his mind in what the newscaster below is calling "one of the dumbest rules in high school sports."

As reported by the Dallas Morning News, Texas powerhouse softball program Plano (Texas) East High reached the Class 5A Region I semifinals thanks to a narrow, 3-2, eight-inning victory against area rival Flower Mound (Texas) High. Yet Plano East, which has since moved on to the regional finals, almost never even reached extra innings because it appeared that Flower Mound won the matchup with a walk-off hit, going so far as to celebrate the monumental victory until Plano East catcher K.K. Stevens walked up and tagged out Flower Mound's Kelly Powell, who thought she had just scored the winning run.

Here's what happened: With two outs in the seventh inning, Powell came sliding in to home. Stevens tried to apply a tag on Powell during a play at the plate, but she missed. The umpire gave a safe signal.

That safe signal sent the Flower Mound team into delirium as it celebrated what it assumed was a berth in the regional semifinals. That's when Plano East coach Karen Kalhoefer walked over to Stevens and told her to tag Powell. She did so, and the umpire signaled out, ending the frame and sending the elimination game into extra innings, where Plano East scored and advanced.

So, what was the umpire signaling if he threw up the safe sign? As it turns out, he was actually doing his job. According to Article 9 of the National High School Federations Baseball Rulebook, if a runner misses the plate, an umpire is instructed to hesitate slightly. If no one applies a tag, he then is supposed to signal safe. However, if the defending team then appeals the safe call and either tags the runner or touches home plate, the umpire is then to call the runner out.

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There will never again be a team called the Braves, Chiefs or Indians in the state of Oregon, after the Northwest state officially outlawed all mascots connected to Native American themes in a State Board of Education meeting.

The decision to ban Native American-based mascots came as the result of a 5-1 vote by the state Board of Ed and will require some 15 schools to change their mascots. Additionally, all schools which refer to their teams as the Warriors will also have to scrub all references to any Native American customs from school insignia.

According to the Portland Oregonian, the decision to ban Native American mascots came after six years of debate on the subject. While there is still a five-year grace period before the rule kicks in, State Board Chairwoman Brenda Frank, who is a Klamath Tribe member, said she was emotional about what she clearly considered to be a landmark decision.

"I'm overwhelmed, but I'm holding back on my emotions -- I have a meeting to finish," Frank told the Oregonian. "It's been a long time coming."

While the decision to get rid of all Native American mascots may seem like a simple issue of political correctness, it also brings with it significant economic issues at a time of extreme financial distress for many of the state's school districts.

According to one school -- Molalla (Ore.) High -- the effort to rid itself of all insignia related to its existing "Indians" mascot could cost the school district hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, Molalla principal Randy Dalton insisted that no one in the school's surrounding community took offense at the school's choice of a mascot.

"I'd be hard pressed to find somebody who would want to bring shame to the Molalla Indian Tribe," Dalton said. "There's a lot of tradition here. It's a very respectful community that wants to do the right thing."

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There are speedy softball players, and then there is Plano (Texas) East High senior Jennifer Madu. One of the nation's fastest female sprinters, Madu became the ultimate late-season addition to a roster when she joined the school's softball team after the conclusion of the track and field campaign to serve solely as a pinch runner.

Talk about an unfair advantage.

As you might guess, Madu — who won four events at the recent UIL Class 5A state track meet — is definitely the fastest base runner in the state of Texas. It's possible that she's the fastest base runner in the entire nation. The trick, as the Dallas Morning News noted, is that she had never even run the bases until just days before her first-ever varsity game, a milestone which happened to come in the Class 5A Region I semifinals.

"She's friends with a lot of our girls, and she was like, 'When I'm done with state, I'll come out and run for you,'" Plano East coach Karen Kalhoefer told the Morning News. "I put her on our UIL roster before we even started playoffs.

"She came out [Wednesday], and I gave her a helmet and gave her some cleats. The girls, their jaws just dropped. ... She's the fastest runner I've ever had."

As it turns out, it didn't take Madu long to acclimatize to her new running surroundings. Madu, who will run for Texas A&M beginning in the fall, scored multiple times during her first weekend in the diamond in Plano East's sweep of Lubbock (Texas) Coronado High on Friday and Saturday.

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The daughter-in-law of Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, who has served as a volunteer high school track and field coach in Oregon, was fired on Monday after an investigation proved that she escorted a 17-year-old member of her boys track squad to the school's prom.

As reported by the Associated Press, 41-year-old Melissa Bowerman, the daughter-in-law of waffle-sole inventor Bill Bowerman, escorted an unnamed 17-year-old on the Condon (Ore.) High track team to the school's prom after the runner told her he lacked a date for the prom. Bowerman, who is married to 73-year-old co-coach Jon Bowerman and also has a son on the same team, told the AP that she offered to take the student to prom in part to motivate him to improve his grades in his English class.

"If they go on [academic] probation and suspension, then they can't go to the track meets," Melissa Bowerman told the AP. "I said, 'OK, I will go with you, but we've got to talk about English first. You're going to do better in English.'"

Bowerman insisted that she and her date only danced to "a couple" of slow songs and spent the rest of the evening playing ping pong and foosball. The student's father also said he was OK with the coach escorting his son because, "Melissa has been like a surrogate mom to these kids for years."

The handling of Bowerman's dismissal wasn't done in the most tactful manner, either. With the Condon team preparing to load a bus for the state track and field meet, the Bowermans were told that Melissa could not ride on the team bus with the athletes, her husband and other parents.

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A number of different analysts have called Kobe Bryant the best clutch NBA player since Michael Jordan, not least of all MJ himself. Now a rising eighth-grader presents the intriguing possibility that someday, one of the game's brightest stars can represent both players, based solely on his name.

Kobi' Jordan Stephens-Sims (that's no misprint; he spells it with an 'I') may only be in eighth grade, but he already has the explosiveness and athleticism more often associated with major college prospects. He certainly proved that by pulling off the audacious dunk you see in the clip above, when he tossed the ball off the backboard to himself and finished a vicious slam on a fast break.

Keep in mind, this is a teen who has never played a game of high school basketball.

The 6-foot-4, 190-pound point guard is only 14, but he's already become the featured star for the AAU Under Armour Southern Kings program in Atlanta, one of the top AAU squads in the South. Stephens-Sims was also flagged down as one of the top performers at the prestigious John Lucas International Middle School Combine, where some anointed him as the event's top point guard.

Stephens-Sims' emergence on the AAU circuit was presaged by his dominance of the Atlanta-area middle school hoops scene. As an eighth-grader, the Georgia resident averaged 36 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists for Atlanta (Ga.) St. Francis Middle School, and he pulled down all those boards in his true position as a point guard.

In fact, Stephens-Sims' smooth ball handling will only make him more of a handful as he grows to his expected eventual height of 6-foot-6 or 6-foot-7 … or more.

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