Sure, football may still be stealing most of the national prep sport attention, but that doesn't mean there aren't impressive hoops plays starting to slip back onto the radar, with holiday hoops tournaments in locales across the country kicking off the sport -- and the best season for hoops highlights -- in earnest.

Case in point: Check out the jam you see below, which was turned in by Houston (Texas) St. Pius X School's Devon Turk.

Yes, you just saw that correctly: Turk jumped directly over a standing opponent, clearing him eagle style on the way to the rim. Considering the fact that Turk is just 6-foot-2, and that the defender in question was at least the same size, that is some major elevation.

The St. Pius senior is still trying to drum up recruiting attention, with the potential star often overshadowed by fellow St. Pius seniors Trey Guidry and Carl Culberson on one of the most talented squads in Texas Association of Parochial and Private Schools. Still, as he showed in the Scouts Focus Texas Showcase above, he has plenty of talent of his own to spread around.

There was a time when Turkey Day football was the biggest scholastic sporting event of the  year, and it wasn't even long ago. States across the country celebrated the truly American holiday in a truly American way; by watching teenagers play football. Yet, in some parts of the country, that once sacrosanct tradition is now under fire, with football games and practices being moved away from Thanksgiving Day in favor of Thanksgiving Eve or, in some cases, off the weekend altogether.

Kingsway football

As reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, more and more New Jersey schools have looked into moving their traditional Thanksgiving Day Turkey Bowl rivalries to Thanksgiving Eve in an attempt to give their players more time with their families on the holiday.

"People are so busy and do so much traveling to get to Thanksgiving dinner," Kingsway athletic director Joe Galliera, whose school hosted rival Clearview on Wednesday, told the Inquirer. "This creates more of an opportunity for people to have more time to spend with their families.

"We talked with the adminstration, the school board, a lot of different people. Most people seem to think it's a good idea."

While the loss of an annual pastime might seem like a major sacrifice for schools across the state, a number of programs have stepped forward expressing excitement about moving the biggest game of the year to the night before the biggest football holiday of them all.

Those sentiments have been shared by Inquirer columnist Phil Anastasia, who said that moving away from games on Thanksgiving shouldn't be seen as waving a white flag on football tradition.

"We're looking forward to playing under the lights," Cherry Hill East coach Tom Coen told the Inquirer. "It's exciting for our kids and it enables more people to spend more time with their family on Thanksgiving."

Increased family time appears to be the driving motivation behind changes in Los Angeles as well, but there's a distinct difference in sun drenched Southern California: High schools there haven't traditionally competed on Thanksgiving Day.

Across the country on Thursday, Americans will sit down to dinner with their families and slice into a nice, freshly roasted (or fried, or broiled, or smoked, or however else you'd like to cook your bird) turkey with plenty of traditional fixings.

Don't think the turkeys aren't keeping track of this annual apocalypse. While the birds that show up on your table may be of the domesticated variety, their wild cousins are fighting back, one aggressive act at a time.

A year after Prep Rally showed you the first act of turkey aggression in sports -- the revenge of Turkey Tom at a youth soccer game -- we bring you the flock's second act, a John Brown-style raid on two teenagers who innocently went out to the backyard hoping to have some fun … and ended up in a chase for their life freedom safety general health.

As you can see, the turkeys are not taking this lightly, and they clearly have the stamina to cause plenty of problems. After all, if one bird alone could run in a tricky game of tag

In one of the more generous incidents in recent prep sports memory, a Florida girls cross country team voluntarily gave up their runners-up medals and trophy to a school which they felt deserved them more, and they did so entirely of their own volition, without any influence of a coach or other adult.

On Monday, Prep Rally wrote about the Plantation (Fla.) American Heritage School girls cross country team, which was knocked out of what was eventually determined to be a second place finish at the Florida High School Athletic Association Class 2A state cross country meet because of a bizarre mix up with the timing chips on the shoes of two team members.

Those mismatched timing chips -- which are used to ensure that a runner follows the correct course and crosses the finish line and all check points -- dropped American Heritage down to a fifth place finish, even though the team felt it should have finished much higher. As it turns out, the American Heritage runners weren't alone in that sentiment, with the school that did finish in second place going to extreme lengths to let their opponents know that how they felt about American Heritage's performance.

As reported by Jacksonville's FirstCoastNews.com, the Jacksonville (Fla.) Bolles School girls cross country team, which was bumped up from third place to second in the Class 2A meet by the American Heritage disqualifications, voluntarily decided to give their runners-up medals and trophy to the team they felt should rightfully have finished there.

According to Bolles senior runner Micayla Costa, there was no debate among the Bolles team about what to do because they all knew that the American Heritage runners deserved the honor more than they did. In fact, the team had already gathered and decided to hand over their medals and trophy before Bolles cross country coach Tony Ryan could speak to them about it.

"We huddled up in a group to talk about it," Costa told FirstCoastNews. "The team decided not to keep the trophy, the medals and the runner-up title."

That meant a quick turnaround from the medal stand, where the Bolles girls had stood on the runners-up platform next to newly crowned 2A champion Miami (Fla.) Carrollton School, to a nearby huddle where the American Heritage squad was still in a state of shock over its sudden fall.

Without letting them know what they planned to do, the Bolles team members walked over to American Heritage runners and presented them with the second place medals. As one might expect, the reaction was emotional.

It's not completely unique for a program to honor a fellow student with a developmental disability by making him an honorary member of the team, or even an honorary captain. However, a team doing that for a fellow student who isn't even a part of their school in unique indeed.

Archbishop Wood tight end Colin Thompson and John ShulbyYet that's precisely what has happened at Philadelphia (Pa.) Archbishop Wood High, where a long-running, close friendship between one of the nation's top-ranked tight end prospect and a special friend has led to an extra captain at the midfield coin toss before every game and, on Saturday, a celebratory ice bath for a team member who wasn't on the coaching staff.

As chronicled by both the Philadelphia Daily News' Ted Silary and ESPN.com, Archbishop Wood tight end Colin Thompson -- the number six-ranked tight end in America, according to Rivals.com -- first became friends with John Shulby, who has Down Syndrome, when both were in middle school together in Doylestown, Pa. When Thompson was assigned to be a "buddy" for Shulby at a track meet, a role designed to ensure that Shulby made it to each of his events on time, Thompson turned it into much more, sparking a friendship that has endured throughout Thompson's high school career.

While it might appear that the relationship is a simple product of a Pennsylvania program called Athletes Helping Athletes, Thompson insists the bond between the two is much more; a true, long-standing friendship that has flourished from its fortuitous origins.

"John is one of my best friends," Thompson told ESPN.com. "He is an inspiration to myself and our football team to be better people. He is a great kid, and he will do great things in life. I love him. He's a big part of my family and our football family."

Now, Shulby is a part of a much larger family. Archbishop Wood has helped Shulby fight against common use of the "r-word" with the "Spread the Word" campaign, and the teenager has been a mainstay at every Wood football event for three entire seasons.

Two highly ranked football teams in Texas saw their much ballyhooed Saturday night faceoff spill over into nastiness, with coaches from one team celebrating wildly at the final whistle, drawing the ire of the high-profile coach on the opposing sideline.

The Dallas Skyline football huddle

The dispute stemmed from the tense, 41-31 Dallas (Texas) Skyline High victory against DeSoto (Texas) High on Saturday, a playoff victory which ended the season of DeSoto, which entered the game ranked No. 34 in the RivalsHigh 100. The win moved Skyline all the way to No. 7 nationally, a leap of 16 spots in the national rankings.

Still, all of that attention has been overshadowed a bit by the actions of Skyline head football coach Reginald Samples, who celebrated his team's victory with his assistants, at least one of whom tossed his headset off in celebration at the final whistle. According to Dallas South News, the coaching staff then jumped into celebratory hip bumps with one another while Skyline's players flapped their arms wildly, an action meant to mock the DeSoto players, whose mascot is the eagle.

DeSoto football coach Claude Mathis

The celebrations were the result of pent-up frustration for Skyline, which was blanked 38-0 by DeSoto in the 2010 playoffs. The bad feelings from the prior season's meeting spilled over during the game, with DeSoto earning two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties on one second-half drive alone, and Skyline was also flagged at least once for a personal foul.

With all that prior history and a decisive victory under the team's belt, Samples and his staff were not about to hold back. Fittingly, the DeSoto coaching staff was not too thrilled with its counterparts' antics.

"They should show some class," DeSoto coach Claude Mathis (who is pictured above at right) told the Dallas Morning News. "Their coach was firing up his players after the game. He told them to do that. That's a poor example to set."

In fact, it appears hysteria like the kind spread by the Skyline staff is nothing new, at least according to Mathis. Here's what the DeSoto coach told RivalsHigh national analyst Dallas Jackson about the rivalry.

"You need to understand that I will never forget how they acted towards us the first time they beat us," he said. "I called a timeout and called the kids off to look at how they were acting. I will never forget it."

The celebration continued after the game.

"Skyline sent dead wreaths from funeral homes and sympathy cards to us at the school when they beat us," Mathis said.

Two players produced a nasty finish to the season finale for two California teams, and neither player involved came out looking very good.

With Palo Alto (Calif.) Gunn High rolling toward a 54-23 rout of San Jose (Calif.) Lynbrook High, Gunn receiver Skylar Larson brought in an impressive touchdown grab. The catch marked the fourth time Larson reached the end zone in the game, and it clearly pushed the Lynbrook defenders over the top.

That was made evident when one of those aforementioned defensive backs gave Larson a massive shove in the end zone, sending the receiver toppling head-over-heels. One would have hoped that Larson would have shrugged that indignity off, particularly considering where it happened (i.e., the end zone, where he was celebrating a touchdown).

Instead, the diminutive senior receiver -- he stands just 5-foot-9 -- couldn't hold himself back, throwing a punch at the defender who had just knocked him down (in multiple playbacks of the video you see above, Prep Rally could never ascertain the jersey number of the player who was punched) … and sending that defender falling backwards in one of the most comical flops Prep Rally can remember in high school football since, well, ever.

Go ahead and watch Larson land his punch again, and then watch the reaction of the player he hits. There is literally more than a second between when the punch lands on the side of the player's helmet and when he falls. In fact, he takes a full, calm step backward and then topples downward as if he has been shot.

Clearly, the only possible appropriate response was the one given by parents in the stands. It started with, "Ah, hell no," and wrapped up moments later -- after the defender had gone down -- with, "What the hell?"

Naturally, the flop becomes even more ridiculous when you recognize that the punching victim was hit squarely in the helmet. Really, what kind of a punch to the helmet could force a player to fall over like that? It's as if he saw Red Bulls defender Rafa Marquez pull this stunt in October and wanted to try it on for size himself.

The doubts could have doubled as a riddle.

When Natalie Randolph first took the head football coaching job at Washington (D.C.) Coolidge High, those in the community who doubted whether she could succeed asked when she would be able to win at a struggling program in an inner-city Washington school.

Coolidge football coach Natalie Randolph

Now they have an answer, and it's an awfully impressive one: Two years.

In only her second year at the helm, Randolph has led Coolidge to an 8-2 record and a spot in the annual D.C. Turkey Bowl, a city-wide championship game that engenders more pride than any other sporting event among public schools in the district across the year.

As reported by the Associated Press, at 11 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, Randolph will lead the Coolidge Colts onto the field to face off against an 8-3 Washington (D.C.) Dunbar High squad which edged Coolidge in overtime earlier in November. The setback kept the Colts from a shot at an ever-rare 10-win season, but it didn't keep them from a Turkey Bowl rematch which will give the program a chance to prove it deserves to be considered alongside the best public and private programs in the greater D.C. area.

More strikingly, it will serve as a chance for Randolph to prove once and for all that she deserves to be considered as more than just any other coach, and that such a distinction has nothing to do with her gender, as she made clear to the Washington Post earlier this month.

That Coolidge could have improved this much, this quickly is almost beyond belief. Randolph lost her first five games in charge in 2010, a spell which served as the continuation of a long run of bad luck which truly began during summer training, when the program's most notable returning player suspiciously defected to Dunbar.

Yet Coolidge never folded, despite the losses and near ever-present media spotlight.

"I'm not one to be all out in the open," Randolph told the AP. "I'm not a person that really enjoys being out in the public eye, and when I have something to do, I want to do that. I don't want to be bothered."

After a crushing play led to the team's fifth loss, Coolidge allegedly delivered a scathing speech to her team, a moment which defined her team's first season -- the Colts would respond by winning their final four games and earn a spot in the playoffs -- and set the stage for the dominant season which has come in 2011.

"The kids kind of realized they don't want that feeling anymore," Shedrick Young, Coolidge's defensive coordinator in 2010 told the AP. "After that, they believed in what we were doing. Instead of individual accolades, they played for each other. ... We didn't baby 'em anymore. She's probably got the worst mouth on the field sometimes. She'll let 'em know."

Those results are even more impressive when you consider that Randolph has been coaching with even more limitations in her second season. Because of problems with getting official approval for paperwork renewing Young as the team's defensive coordinator for the 2011 season, Randolph has been forced to call all of the team's defensive plays herself, a responsibility which has become a shared duty between the coach, other assistants and Young, who watches the games from the stands and passes down advice to the bench.