In California, a new star has emerged on the basketball court. In only his sixth varsity high school basketball game, Marcus LoVett Jr. scored an astounding 55 points (or 57 points, depending on which source you trust) in an early season tournament game on Saturday, leading his Burbank (Calif.) Providence High squad to an 85-74 overtime victory against Santa Maria (Calif.) St. Joseph High.

Burbank Providence point guard Marcus Lovett

According to the Santa Maria Times, Los Angeles Times and other Southern California media outlets, LoVett was practically unstoppable, nearly doubling his season-average of 30.5 points per game while stretching the St. Joseph defense by drilling four threes. He also connected on 15 of his 19 free throws, punishing St. Joseph for fouling to try to keep him from getting good looks.

And perhaps most impressively of all, LoVett took over when the game was on the line, scoring 10 of his points in overtime.

"I think he could get to the hole anytime he wanted to," St. Joseph basketball coach Tom Mott told the Santa Maria Times. "The great players are going to figure out a way to do what they have to do."

That LoVett Jr. has emerged as a potential star isn't a huge surprise. The teen was one of the more highly touted young prospects in the country entering the season. Still, that he has done so as rapidly as he has is shocking. The point guard's scoring prowess has hardly gone unnoticed, with the Santa Maria Times reporting that he is on the verge of committing -- or perhaps already has committed -- to play at UCLA.

The season is only weeks old, and we have our first truly incredible slam of the season. When Decatur (Ga.) Columbia High forwards Jhaustin Thomas and Chris Horton both went up for a put-back dunk, they both arrived at the ball and rim at approximately the same time.

What happened next was fantastic news for team video compilers and horrible news for Druid Hills (Ga.) High officials, who were hosting Columbia High; the ball went through the rim, and that was the last thing the rim ever did.

As you can see above, Thomas and Horton's rare double-slam caused a general sense of discombobulated, celebratory commotion. Columbia is the defending state champion, and clearly Thomas and Horton can provide the heft to defend its state crown.

Both forwards have also achieved a level of athletic fame on their own. Thomas is much more known for his exploits in football, where the defensive end prospect landed a scholarship to South Carolina. Horton plans to play college basketball at Austin Peay University.

A male cheerleader in Michigan accidentally disqualified his squad from a recent cheerleading competition for the most basic of all reasons: He's a boy.

Lakeview cheerleading team

Brandon Urbas is like many other American teens: He spent much of his youth dreaming of being a high school varsity athlete. The only difference was the sport he hoped to compete in: Urbas wanted to be a cheerleader.

In 2011, Urbas achieved that dream, joining the St. Clair Shores (Mich.) Lakeview High varsity cheerleading team. Despite being the only male cheerleader on the squad, Urbas said everything was going swimmingly throughout the football season. Urbas fit in with the rest of the squad, and he even said that the Lakeview football team had stepped forward to support him, offering "to get his back" if anyone taunted him or gave him trouble.

Instead, where Urbas has suddenly found himself being discriminated against is precisely where he should have been most protected: In competitive cheerleading. According to Michigan ABC affiliate WXYZ, Urbas unintentionally got the Lakeview cheerleading squad disqualified from its first winter cheerleading competition … because he is a boy. Judges ruled that Lakeview couldn't compete in the event because they were fielding a boy.

"I cried," Urbas told WXYZ. "I felt like they were taking away my dream of being able to do it in college and getting scholarships."

According to the ABC affiliate, Lakeview's disqualification was based on a Michigan High School Athletic Association regulation that stipulates that girls can compete on boys teams in sports where a girls team is not offered, but boys are not allowed to compete on any girls squads in competitive sports where a male option is not offered. It's unclear why that rule wasn't known before the competition began, in which case Urbas would not have competed in the first place.

While that gender law clearly has prejudicial tendencies, the MHSAA issued a statement on Friday intimating that it's unlikely those rules will change anytime soon.

"Boys may not participate on a girls team in MHSAA sponsored postseason meets and tournaments," the statement read. "Schools have adopted this position to preserve participation opportunities for the historically underrepresented gender."

Jerry Jones likes to set records. That's neither a newsflash nor a particularly unique development, particularly after Cowboys Stadium's Super Bowl debacle last February that unfolded in part because Jones was dead set on breaking the previous single-game attendance record.

Cowboys Stadium in Arlington

Many had pointed to Saturday as another potential record moment for Cowboys Stadium, with the cavalcade of Texas state title football games to be held on site serving as a potential single-day record draw for total high school football fans in attendance for a game. Those chances increased when perennial power Southlake (Texas) Carroll High earned a spot in the Class 5A Division I state finals.

Clearly, such a crowd -- the current record is 49,953, dating back to a state title game in 1977 -- is precisely what Jones had in mind when he successfully lobbied the University Interscholastic League to host all of its football title games at Cowboys Stadium in a two-day period. Yet, in a twist of irony, Jones' own team may ruin his stadium's chance at a record.

As noted by the Dallas Morning News, the Cowboys are scheduled to play in Tampa Bay on Saturday night, a matchup with playoff indications for the Cowboys and plenty of motivation for viewers to tune in.

That, in turn, might keep away precisely the kind of football fans who might otherwise have served as impromptu walk-up fans which could have pushed Cowboys Stadium's attendance over the top.

Finishing a marathon is always a major accomplishment. Finishing a marathon while blind? That's even more inspirational.

How about finishing a marathon as a blind 11-year-old? Incredibly, that happened on Sunday, with a young blind Japanese girl completing a 26.2 mile race in Hawaii in some of the more inspiring circumstances imaginable.

As first reported by Hawaii News Now, Wakana Ueda was technically the last finisher of the 2011 Honolulu Marathon, but she was also almost certainly the most touching as well. The Toyota City, Japan-native finally crossed the marathon finish line 14 hours and three minutes after the race started, yet was still met by a rapt group of supporters who had urged her on throughout the course.

"Before the halfway mark, her leg was cramping up, and she was thinking about quitting many times," Ueda's mother told Hawaii News Now. "But because the team supported her, she was able to finish."

As soon as she crossed the finish line, Ueda broke into tears, stunned at what she had just accomplished. Given her age and impairment, she wasn't the only one who was touched by her achievement either, with her mother quick to join in on the emotional celebration.

To say that Miramar (Fla.) High offensive lineman Gerard Toussaint didn't expect to be on the field during Saturday's Florida Class 8A state title game two years ago is an understatement.

Miramar lineman Gerard Toussaint (BeRecruited)

Sure, Toussaint was at Miramar's last state title appearance in 2009, but he was performing in a very different role: He was playing a trumpet. In fact, Toussaint wasn't even part of the Miramar football program at the time.

Now, at 6-foot-2 and 270 pounds, Toussaint will have a much more active role in Miramar's final game of 2011, with a state championship on the line against Tampa (Fla.) Plant High. Yet, as reported by the Miami Herald, Toussaint still probably wouldn't be as significant a factor in Saturday's matchup if it weren't for a less fortunate turn of events: The tragic death of his friend and former teammate, Isaiah Laurencin, during team conditioning drills just weeks before the start of the current season.

Toussaint entered the summer training season as Laurencin's backup after a year spent on the Miramar junior varsity squad. Nonetheless, Toussaint was still one of the fellow lineman's best friends. Now, he is insisting that the memory of his lost friend has inspired he and his teammates' run through the state tournament.

"It's funny, we really had a friendly competition," Toussaint told the Herald
"I would tell him I'm going to take that spot. He would say 'Go ahead and try, we'll see.' Every [football] camp we would go to, you could see the fire in his eyes. At first, I didn't feel like I deserved [the starting job] because we didn't get to finish the summer [competition]. But after a while, I just looked at it like I have to do this for him. I have to finish what he started."

He's been called the next Kevin Durant. He's been compared to Chris Webber. More than anything else, what 14-year-old Thon Maker truly represents is a pure sporting enigma: A 7-foot middle schooler who has the refined mid-range game and dominant post presence of a top high school senior (if not a college star) already.

Maker has exploded onto the pre-prep basketball scene since arriving in Houston for the John Lucas International Middle School Combine in August. An Australian of Sudanese descent (which only adds to his intrigue), Maker is still in middle school but flashes the kind of complete game usually only found in a top college-level prospect.

Add to that his 7-foot size and massive wingspan at the tender age of 14, and there's little question why Maker is getting a load of attention as a newly emigrated American Middle Schooler. The lanky, multi-position star is spending his eighth-grade season competing for Metairie Park (La.) Country Day School, where he has wasted little time in emerging as one of the nation's top prospects for the Class of 2016. He's already the top-ranked prospect in his class, according to MiddleSchoolHoops.com.

Of course, that's where any knowledge about Maker stops and the pure guesswork begins. Because of his age, no one knows if Maker wants to continue to evolve as a swingman -- a la Durant -- or whether he plans to put on weight and try to bang inside as a center. No one knows whether he really likes Louisiana or if he pines for home in Australia.

A pep rally prank intended to bring laughter and cheers at a Minnesota high school has instead sparked a firestorm of controversy after parents of some senior student athletes took a practical joke too far.

A parental pep rally kissing game at Rosemount High School in Minnesota

As reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a recent winter sports pep rally at Rosemount (Minn.) High featured a comedy skit which took advantage of unknowing captains of the various winter varsity squads. After the team captains walked into the gym blindfolded, they were told that they were going to be kissed by a special someone, and then were asked to guess who it was that kissed them.

You can see full video footage of the pep rally incident here, but beware, there are some moments that veer into "make out" territory and can come across as pretty inappropriate.

[Related: The Vancouver riot Kissing Couple has turned up in a surprising place]

It turns out that the person who kissed the athletes -- in every circumstance -- was their own opposite sex parent. While no one has questioned the comedic intentions of the prank, the stunt itself has still drawn plenty of criticism not for the student athletes, but for what the parents did in executing the practical joke. As you can see above, some of the parents took their roles as "special someones" to a level that left many onlookers feeling uncomfortable and even queasy.

Here's how the Star Tribune described the sketch's lowlights:

Some of the parents during the 59-second YouTube video are seen holding the kisses for several seconds, cupping their child's faces or embracing and swaying.

One mother moved her son's hand down to her behind during the encounter. Another mom has her son down on the gym floor to the delight of two male students nearby.

According to the Minneapolis paper, a number of those in attendance called and emailed to make it clear that they felt offended by the sketch, despite the fact that none of the students or parents involved in the kissing antics complained about the routine at all.