One of the nation's most prestigious institutions with a vibrant Division I athletic department has found its admissions policies for prospective athletes come under question for rather odd reasons: Critics are saying that the school isn't bending enough to accommodate athletes, rather than bending too much.

Rejected Northwestern commit Mislav Brzoja — FIBA Europe

As noted by Rivals.com and Northwestern blog Lake The Posts, Northwestern's basketball program recently failed in its attempt to gain admission for Croatian prospect Mislav Brzoja, despite the fact that he boasts a pristine 4.0 GPA from Indianapolis (Ind.) Trader's Point Christian Academy. Another Northwestern commit, 6-foot-11 center Alex Olah, was admitted from the same school earlier this spring.

While the rejection of a mid-tier prospect from a Division I program with tough academic standards might not usually turn heads, the fact that it came when that prospective student boasted a 4.0 GPA and one of his prep teammates had already been admitted raises unique questions. There is no sentiment that Trader's Point Christian is a "diploma factory"; if that was the case, Olah would not have been admitted, either.

[College Basketball Roundtable: How will Mizzou and Texas A&M fare in the SEC?]

According to Lake The Posts, the concerns of the Northwestern admissions committee likely centered around Brzoja's academic record in his native Croatia. When combined with the fact that Brzoja didn't attend Trader's Point Christian for his entire high school career, the Northwestern admissions department determined that his academic record was not sufficient for admission into the school.

While no numbers from Brzoja's European academic career have come to public attention, the teenager allegedly didn't perform as well in those classes as he did once he moved to America. While some transfer athletes might have been able to avoid using any prior high school work from outside the country, Brzoja had to petition the NCAA to include prior credits from Croatia to graduate with the Class of 2012.

Usually, a 17-year-old playing in a league with 13- and 14-year-olds would set off major alarm bells about inequity and cheating. That's not happening in Fruit Heights, Utah, despite the fact that Pony Division baseball player Blake Curtis is 17. That's because he is almost certainly one of the most popular players in the entire Farmington Area Baseball League.

There's a good reason for that: Curtis is a young man with Down Syndrome who simply loves to play baseball.

17-year-old youth baseball player Blake Curtis, who competes with Down Syndrome — Deseret News

As reported in a terrific feature by the Deseret News' Keith McCord, Curtis continues to play in the Farmington Area Baseball League because he wants to compete in baseball but wouldn't necessarily fit in seamlessly in an area high school squad. In Fruit Hills, no one has a problem with Curtis' participation. In fact, they even embrace special rules to allow the teen to play.

Unlike all other teams, Curtis' squad, which is coached by his father, Jeff Curtis, is allowed to field 10 players at a time, with Curtis joining the traditional nine fielders as either an extra right fielder or a pitcher. More notably, if a pitch is outside and the younger Curtis swings and misses, that pitch still counts as a ball. If a pitch is a strike, it's always a strike whether Curtis swings or not, just as it would be otherwise.

According to the elder Curtis, the family never expected Blake to get to a point where he could face live pitching, despite the fact that he began playing baseball at age 5. Concerns about his safety and ability to play up to competition were always present. Then there were concerns about how he would react when things didn't go his way; the first time Blake Curtis was hit by a pitch, he didn't want to go to first base, and was angry that he didn't get to keep swinging for a hit.

If you took a team photo of a high school sports team mounted on top of a tank and holding a semi-automatic weapon today, the shot would almost certainly breed outrage and/or concern about the message being sent from that photo (with the obvious exception of a team at a military academy). There was a time when that wasn't the case: The Cold War 1980s.

The 1988 state champion Federal Way basketball team — Twitter

Now, with alums paging through old yearbooks, terrific team photos occasionally come to light through the magic of social media. None of those snapshots have been more outlandish than the one you see above, which depicts the Federal Way (Wash.) High state basketball champions from 1988.

The photo -- which first attracted attention at Deadspin -- was originally posted by Twitter user ArtyinBuffalo, who wasn't a member of that Federal Way squad, but insisted he is close with members of the team. He later provided subsequent information to Prep Rally, which seems to back up that information.

There are any number of questions that the Federal Way photo raises. Chief among them are "Why a tank?" The answer to that, it turns out, is that the tank symbolized capturing a state championship for Federal Way. Why? Prep Rally has no idea, but apparently it did.

The team was able to use a tank, according to then-teenager Robert Thompson, because they took a trip to the Fort Lewis Museum … in full 1980s basketball uniforms. According to Thompson, the caption for the team photo was "Armed and Dangerous," even though the uzi used for the shot was a toy prop and not a working weapon with live ammunition.

Disturbing video of child abuse during a father and stepson's game of catch has led to the resignation of an elected California official and possible further legal action after a man took unacceptable action against his son. (Warning: Video contains NSFW language.)

As reported by San Diego ABC affiliate 10 News, the Associated Press and other Southern California sources, Imperial County Irrigation District director Anthony Sanchez was caught on video whipping his stepson during a game of catch between the two.

It remains unproven what provoked the violent action from the father, but his belt-wielding actions were caught on tape by a neighbor who documented the incident to provide proof of the official's child abuse.

According to NBC affiliate KETK, the neighbor capturing the video on tape was Oscar Lopez, who eventually stepped in and told Sanchez in no uncertain terms that he needed to stop beating his stepchild.

"That's enough. I'm having a [expletive] problem with you for beating

In one of the more bizarre and over-the-top moves in recent memory, a junior hockey coach in Canada has been banned for coaching his team for a full year because he allowed his players to skip the opening and closing ceremonies of a tournament so they could study for exams.

The incident occurred in Newfoundland, where Brian Cranford served as the coach of the Mount Pearl Junior Blades. As reported by CBC and the Cape Breton Post — and brought to Prep Rally's attention by Deadspin and Puck Daddy's Sean Newell — Cranford and his team competed in April's Don Johnson memorial tournament, but the coach could only convince his players to compete if they were allowed to skip the opening and closing ceremonies for the event to study for their forthcoming final exams.

"These are junior kids, they're 18, 19, 20 years old," Cranford told CBC. "Because of our schedule, we had real issues trying to get a team iced for every game."

Cranford agreed to let the team miss the opening and closing speeches and notified all of the officials at the event. Roughly a month later, the coach was notified by the organizing committee of Hockey Newfoundland and Labrador that his decision was unacceptable, and that he would be assessed a year-long ban from coaching and a $2,000 penalty for the Junior Blades skipping the tournament's opening and closing ceremonies.

According to CBC, Hockey Newfoundland and Labrador Hockey president Jack Lee said the decision was made strictly on the bottom line: The regulations for the tournament stipulated that teams were required to take part from start to finish. Clearly, the organization's interpretation of "start" was quite literal.

A new study commissioned by the Los Angeles Unified School District provides evidence that could be reassuring or troubling, depending on the amount of sports action provided by your local schools.

Los Angeles University boys basketball player Victor Nwaba

As reported by the Los Angeles Times' Eric Sondheimer, LAUSD has discovered a striking correlation between students' participation in interscholastic athletics and their performance in both attendance and in the classroom. According to the study, the 35,000 student athletes in LAUSD attended an average of 21 more days of school per year than their counterparts, while they also sported GPAs some 0.55 to 0.74 points higher than non-athletes.

Both of those statistics are pretty staggering when you consider that GPAs are typically calculated on a scale of 0.00-4.00 and students attend an average of 180 days per school year.

"[The study statistics] prove what has generally been assumed, that participation in high school athletics, on average, positively enhances the student's academic progress in comparison with the rest of the student body," LAUSD commissioner of athletics Barbara Fiege said in a memo to the districts schools, obtained by the Times.

"I believe that a large part of this is due to the intervention and guidance provided daily by qualified coaches, who understand the relationship between academic and athletic success."

[Related: Teen graduates two years after being paralyzed by hockey hit]

While all of these trends could be seen as positive signs for school districts with robust athletic departments, they also bring up troubling concerns when sports simply aren't available. Disturbingly, that's becoming a much more common reality in many districts across the nation.

As Prep Rally previously reported, all interscholastic athletics in Jacksonville, Fla., were set to be canceled for the 2011-12 season until dramatic funding efforts by third parties were able to keep sports in Duval County Schools on track for another year. Another district in California also seriously considered canceling all sports as a way to close a massive budget shortfall.

Similarly, one Ohio high school canceled all athletics during a prior enormous budget shortfall and required a significant tax levy to raise money for sports to be brought back to Grove City (Ohio) High.

While those two incidents serve as rather apocalyptic anecdotes, plenty of other school districts across the country have cut back on the number or breadth of sports they offer, either eliminating junior varsity and freshmen programs or, in some cases, cutting out entire sports where participation numbers were deemed insufficient to justify their continuation.

The findings also bring the motivation behind one Texas district into question. In January, the Premont (Texas) Independent School District unilaterally canceled all interscholastic athletics so that students would be forced to focus on improving their grades and the school's collective marks.

Grand Island (N.Y.) High managed to pull off an improbable comeback during the state regional playoffs on Tuesday evening, coming from three runs down with two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning to defeat Honeoye Falls-Lima (N.Y.) High, 7-6.

Grand Island High's Matt Lenz and coach Dean Santorio. (BuffaloNews.com)

Normally the game should have centered around Grand Island's Dylan Kelly, who singled home the winning run to help his team advance. But it was actually pinch-runner Matt Lenz who stole the show.

As the Buffalo News reported, just hours before his team's game, Lenz's mind was elsewhere, after he spent the morning at a funeral service remembering his father, Ken Lenz, who lost his battle to cancer on June 1, one day after Grand Island had won the Section VI Class A-1 title game.

Needless to say, nobody expected Lenz to show up or play in the game. But Lenz, with the help of his teammates, who were all present at the funeral service, pressed on, taking his place on the bench. He was ready and willing to go in if his name was called.

But given the magnitude of the playoff game, Grand Island coach Dean Santorio figured it would be hard to find a spot to bring Lenz in off the bench. However, an opportunity presented itself in the bottom of the 10th inning with Grand Island down to its last out and three runs behind Honeoye Falls-Lima.

Figuring the game was all but over, Santorio allowed Lenz to come on and pinch run for C.J. Fadel, who'd just advanced to third base on a fly ball.

"I'm coaching the game to win as it unfolds, but I have to be honest, I wasn't thinking we're coming back and winning," Santorio told the Buffalo News. "We'll get him in the game, and we've had a great season. If we score him, even better. If he scores our last run of the season, wow, that would be awesome."

What Santorio didn't expect was that Lenz would play a role in Grand Island's historic win, after Jon Voyzey singled up the middle, allowing Lenz to sprint home and score, cutting the lead to 6-4 for Honeoye Falls-Lima.

After AJ Jasek singled to make it a 6-5 game, Kelly came to the plate and hammered a ball to center, bringing home two runs to win the game, 7-6. Even though Lenz didn't score the winning run, his teammates all agreed after the game that things changed when he took the field to pinch run.

Two years after a debilitating hockey injury robbed him of the ability to walk on his own, a Boston-area teen inspired his classmates by graduating with a special golden diploma honoring him as one of his high school's most exceptional students.

Norwood hockey player Matt Brown — MattBrownNumber3.com

As reported by CBS Boston and a variety of other sources, Norwood (Mass.) High senior Matt Brown, who is paralyzed from the chest down, used a motorized wheelchair to receive his graduation diploma alongside the rest of the school's Class of 2012.

While high school graduation is virtually a right of passage for many American teens, it was anything but guaranteed for Brown after a terrifying injury struck him in a varsity hockey game. The injury occurred during a game against Weymouth (Mass.) High during Brown's sophomore season, instantly leaving the teenager paralyzed from the chest down.

Since then, the teen has inspired and even shocked all those who have looked on, pushing his own struggles and strife to the side to achieve what he always anticipated he would, all while taking part in a number of traditional high school activities. Exactly a year after his injury, Brown attended the 2011 Norwood-Weymouth hockey game and made a statement by cheering on his former teammates with his hair dyed in Norwood colors.

He also earned regional attention by dropping the first puck for a Bruins-Islanders game during the 2011-12 season.

Still, none of the earlier highlights could compare with Brown's trip to collect his diploma on Sunday, when the teen smiled broadly from his motorized chair in a bright blue commencement robe, there to collect the diploma that was rightfully his.