David Matthew Allen mugshot — Mugshots.comHighland Park (Texas) High entered the playoffs as one of the favorites to take home the Class 4A state title, but by Saturday evening, the entire season was thrown into doubt after guard David Matthew Allen was arrested Saturday night on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident.

As the Dallas Morning News reported, Allen was arrested after his SUV hit a parked BMW and he fled the scene of the accident. According to a police affidavit, a witness followed Allen's car before authorities finally pulled him over.

The affidavit said police "could immediately smell a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from the driver." Allen not only had alcohol on his breath, he was also swaying and slurring his speech when he exited the vehicle.

Allen blew 0.115 and 0.122 into a breathalyzer, according to the affidavit; the legal limit in Texas is .08. The arrest came on the heels of Highland Park's opening round playoff victory over Carrollton Newman Smith, a game that Allen ended up missing due to suspension.

The 6-foot guard was averaging more than 23 points per game and 5 rebounds, while leading Highland Park to a 27-2 regular season record. According to the Dallas Morning News, if the school follows district rules, Allen would also miss the team's second-round playoff game.

By traditional standards, Arlington (Wash.) High Shawn Berg didn't have a particularly successful state tournament. The senior entered with a goal of finishing in the medals of Class 4A's 160-pound division. Berg didn't achieve that, but he astonished most of those in attendance at the Tacoma Dome for another powerful reason: Shawn Berg is essentially completely blind.

Arlington blind wrestler Shawn Berg — Seattle Times

As covered artfully by the Seattle Times' Sandy Ringer, Berg's lack of sight -- he is 100 percent blind in his right eye and 95 percent blind in his left -- couldn't keep him from competing at the highest level of high school wrestling throughout his prep career. Proof of that came on Friday night, when Berg finished the Class 4A's preliminary rounds with a 1-2 record, losing his final match by a narrow 1-0 score. If he had won that bout, Berg would have reached the quarterfinals and earned one of the medals he so badly yearned for.

Instead, Berg left with tears and nothing but plaudits from all those he took on or met at the event.

Despite all the attention that Berg has received throughout his high school career, Berg insists that he doesn't think he has accomplished anything special, despite the kind of prolific skills you can see in the video below, from a match in which Berg knocked off a Lake Stevens (Wash.) High wrestler earlier in the 2012 season.

"I get a lot of people who come up to me and say, 'Wow, it's so great what you're able to do,'" Berg told the Times. "I appreciate all of their comments, but I'm just doing what everybody else is doing. It's just that I can't see. It's no different."

Berg's teammates aren't buying that false modesty. Arlington star Bryce McPherson noted that he can't even walk straight with his eyes closed when recounting why Berg was one of his heroes. Even the coach who first convinced Berg to try wrestling -- his father, Arlington assistant coach Darryl Berg -- said that his son was an inspiration.

"He inspires me," Darryl said. "I'm his biggest fan. There's not that many kids who have been through what he's been through. He's made me a better father, a better man, a better husband. It makes me look at life differently.

"He thinks he can do anything," Darryl said. "He wants to drive a car so bad."

In recent days, comments putting Tim Tebow under friendly fire were released, with Broncos backup quarterback Brady Quinn, questioning Tebow's public displays of faith in an interview with Yahoo! Sports' own Michael Silver (and then swiftly apologizing for those very comments). So many have wondered why Tebow didn't speak up about the scathing commentary from a teammate. It turns out there's a good reason for that: He was preoccupied fulfilling the dream of a 9-year-old with a severe tumor disorder.

10-year-old Presli Collins and Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow — Facebook

As reported by Denver Fox affiliate KDVR, Tebow's Wish 15 Foundation stepped in to offer now 10-year-old Parker, Colo., resident Presli Collins (she turned 10 on Tuesday) a chance to be Tebow's date to the 2012 Cartoon Network "Hall of Game" awards in Los Angeles.

Presli Collins suffers from a rare condition called Neurofibromatosis-1, an inherited tumor disorder in which tumors can grow under a patient's skin and form in nerves that extend from the brain and spinal cord.

As it turns out, Collins and her father were invited to the Cartoon Network awards first after the TV station learned of her condition, but when Tebow learned the Parker youngster was a huge fan, he offered to accompany the tyke and serve as her first official date. Unsurprisingly, Collins was more than a bit excited to accept the invitation.

"[Attending the awards with Tebow was] very, very,  very exciting," Collins told KDVR.  "[Tebow] was a thousand times nicer than you think he is."

By stepping forward to chaperone a youngster in need, Tebow also served to highlight the differences between himself and some of his teammates. While disparaging comments from Quinn were hitting the airwaves, Tebow was quietly spending his own free time doing something for a child he had never met, helping to distract her from the strange medical condition which afflicts her and which can become severely degenerative.

As if he needed to, Tebow capped off the night -- in which he also introduced Collins to a number of other professional athletes, including Shaquille O'Neal -- with the classiest line available.

"Thank you for being an amazing date," Presli said with a wide smile.

A Maryland girls swimming team has had its county championship title retroactively stripped for one of the more bizarre retroactive punishments to come down in recent years: It was deemed that improper shaving had occurred.

The Broadneck boys and girls varsity swimming teams — BroadneckAthletics.org

That's right, improper shaving. Not shaving points mind you, but shaving of body hair. And, as it turns out, if the unnamed player implicated had only shaved a couple hours earlier, she and her teammates would still have their county title.

As reported by a number of Maryland news outlets, the Baltimore Sun and Annapolis Capital among them, the Broadneck (Md.) High girls swimming squad lost its Anne Arundel County title after it was determined that one of the team's swimmers shaved on-site just before the start of the event. National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) rules for swimming, diving and water polo stipulate that athletes can not shave before, during or after a meet once a team is on-site.

The reason why the NFHS institutes a no shaving on-site policy is to protect the swimmers themselves from possible blood transmission or, in general, doing full body shaves in high school locker rooms, which would maximize the possibility of unsafe practices like sharing razors. Still, the rule can seem quite a bit over the top when one considers generally acceptable practices for other sports; after all, no one is telling football or basketball players that they can't shave after a game or practice.

Because of the violation, Broadneck lost all points won by the swimmer implicated, dropping the Bruins from first to third place in the final standings. Severna Park (Md.) High was later declared the county champion after Broadneck's lost points were redistributed.

Meanwhile, the Annapolis Capital reported that Broadneck swimming coach Colleen Winans was suspended for the Class 4A-3A Regional Championships which were held on Saturday because of her swimmer's violation. A release from the Anne Arundel School District cited the failure of Winans' squad to abide by "the rules of the game and promote ethical relationships among coaches and players," as the reason for the discipline taken against Winans, which included the one-meet ban.

As Swimming World Magazine general manager Jason Marsteller noted in an email with Prep Rally, it's the retroactive aspect of Broadneck's punishment that may be most bizarre.

"I'm not sure I've seen much of this type of punishment within the sport," Marsteller wrote in an email. "About the only place retroactive punishments happen is in the case of positive doping tests."

Certainly doping tests and shaving seem a world apart, even if both might provide competitive advantages (doping for obvious reasons, and shaving to reduce drag for competitive swimmers).

An Oklahoma girls basketball team fought its way through an emotional whirlwind over two weekend days, earning a district championship just hours after one of its starters died shockingly from a sudden bout of pneumonia.

As documented by the Tulsa World, Fox23.com and a handful of other Oklahoma news outlets, the Vian (Okla.) girls basketball team dedicated its 2011-12 season to Whitney Miller, one of the team's most consistent and energetic performers, after her shocking death on Friday. Miller, who was crowned the school's homecoming queen in January, was reportedly taken to an emergency room on Wednesday while suffering with the flu. Two days later she was diagnosed with pneumonia, and her lungs filled with fluid and collapsed shortly thereafter. She died hours later.

That left the Vian squad less than a day to come to grips with the loss of one of its best friends before it would have to take the court for the team's most important game of the season, a matchup with Haskell (Okla.) High in which it could clinch a Class 3A district championship. Rather than attempt to reschedule the game, Vian opted to compete and honor Miller's memory, with the Wolverines fighting their way to a 63-52 win that earned the squad as emotional a title as any could remember.

The dedications and notes of remembrance Saturday night at Haskell were almost overwhelming.

The entire Vian team wore patches on the shoulders of their jerseys and included purple tape on their shoes. They wore warm-up shirts with "We [heart] 3" to honor Miller's jersey number.

Vian homecoming queen and basketball star Whitney Miller — Vian.K12.Ok.Us

Perhaps most touchingly, Miller's cousin and best friend, Deidra Smith, wore her number 3 throughout the game. The game jersey had been presented to her by Miller's mother earlier on Saturday, and Smith wore the shirt with pride for every second she could remain on the court.

"When I fouled out, that hurt," Smith tearily told the World. "I hadn't been fouling out, but wearing her jersey I think it was part of it. She would always get three fouls in the first half."

In the fall, Brandon Heicklen gets attention for what he does on a football field. A standout freshman punter for Woodland Hills (Calif.) Taft High, Heicklen had already received major accolades before even arriving on the high school scene, earning Junior All-American honors as a seventh grader.

Woodland Hills Taft punter Brandon Heicklen — HighSchoolRudyAwards.com

Yet despite his success kicking an American football, it's another sport where Heicklen may truly break out: Australian Rules football. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the 14-year-old is a promising member of the Beachside Sharks, an adult Aussie Rules team based out of Santa Monica.

The other 25 members are all above the age of 25, yet Heicklen is still a standout forward for the squad.

In fact, he's shown so many flashes for the Sharks that Heicklen has now earned an extremely rare honor: He's been called up to train with the Under-16 national team. Still just 14, Heicklen will spend July practicing with the squad in Australia leading up to the under 16 2011 NAB AFL U16 National Championships (that's a mouthful, huh?) in Sydney, Australia during the week of July 11.

Some argue that the NBA Slam Dunk Contest has lost the panache that once made it a great event. There are plenty of reasons for that, with a lack of a cash prize and the risk of injury prime among them. Still, there are plenty of reasons why the NBA's best high-flyers should consider suiting up for the annual slam fest, and they've never been articulated more clearly than by this middle school basketball player in a random YouTube video directed squarely at (who else) LeBron James.

The young man you see in the video above is named Sollomon Gessesse. Prep Rally honestly has no idea what his age actually is, but we can tell that the Portland, Ore., native is still in middle school (if that) because he recently tweeted about his basketball team finishing its regular season with a 3-5 record, and no high school team plays only eight regular-season games.

Regardless of Gessesse's hoops acumen, he punches above what his weight is on Twitter, where he often tweets directly at NBA stars (and is followed by the likes of HoopMixtape, who originally introduced Prep Rally to the Portlander). While the pre-teen has yet to get any formal Twitter responses, his critiques are often on point, never more so than with the YouTube plea you see above, in which he presents a cogent argument for why King James should compete in the annual All-Star dunk contest in the style of a Jim Rome caller.

Essentially, Gessesse's argument runs like this:

1) Fans are sick of seeing rookies and bench warmers compete for the dunk title; he caps this line of thought with the terrific line, "It's the NBA where magic happens, not where rookies go because the All-Stars are at the hotel clubbing and drinking and stuff, man. Come on!"

[Related: LeBron James won't rule out return to Cleveland Cavaliers]

2) Having stars like LeBron sit out the All-Star weekend's showpiece event essentially makes them a hypocrite. As Gessesse points out, LeBron frequently tweets with lines like, "Don't let my Saturday night go to waste." Gessesse argues that LeBron sitting out the dunk contest is doing exactly that for all the fans who are desperate to see him compete.

3) What else could better help LeBron reclaim his status as the people's choice of NBA superstar? Here's Gessesse: "I know hanging out at the hotel with everybody is fun, or you could choose to go dunking and make everyone in the country chant your name … well, except Ohio."

LeBron James throws down a reverse jam in a past All-Star game — Getty Images

It's those last, add-on lines to each of Gessesse's claims that really makes his YouTube treatise so great. It's like he's playing his own straight man in a comedian's rant about what LeBron and other NBA stars are doing wrong in trying to rebuild their personal PR.

Natalie Gulbis is one of the top golfers on the LPGA professional circuit, but she's also a bit of a sex symbol for her blond bombshell good looks. Less than a week ago, Gulbis even appeared in full body paint in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue, proving she clearly isn't afraid to flaunt her sexuality for her own benefit.

LPGA golfer Natalie Gulbis — Getty Images

Evidently she's willing to trade on both her golf prowess and good looks to help a good cause, too. We know that after a listing in the Charlotte (N.C.) Palisades Episcopal School silent auction officially offered a chance for any prospective high bidder to caddy a round for Gulbis at a LPGA event of the bidder's choice in the 2012 event calendar (with a few exceptions). As noted by the Orlando Sentinel, there's even a "Buy it Now" option to accompany Gulbis for $8,000.

Gulbis' offering up a round of caddying is certainly a generous one, particularly when you consider all the advice a traditional caddy offers to a golfer. This isn't a practice round that's being auction off, either; this is a full competitive round in which Gulbis is playing for her own salary (players earn different sums based on where they finish in an event's list of competitors).

Perhaps more strikingly, if Gulbis was going to auction off a chance to caddy for her, she could easily keep the proceeds for herself. Instead, she's giving up the $8,000 for what most would agree is a good cause: Helping fund a private school's operating costs and scholarships, even though that school is nowhere near where she herself grew up (Gulbis is a Sacramento native).