Words like “travesty” don’t usually apply to a high school baseball game. They do when the final score of that game is 65-0.

The Licking Heights baseball team topped a league foe 65-0 — USA Today

As first noted by the Newark Advocate, a newspaper in Ohio, and followed upon by Sporting News columnist Bill Bender, the Licking County (Oh.) Licking Heights High baseball team routed Columbus (Oh.) Harvest Prep High by a final score of 65-0. The game was halted after three innings, by which point Licking Heights already had accumulated 48 hits, 13 walks and a troubling 11 hit batsmen.

The Hornets scored 16 runs in the first inning, 18 runs in the second and 31 in the third. Harvest Prep scored no runs at all.

"It's the most awkward I've ever felt in 34 years of coaching," Licking Heights coach Jeff Boyer told the Sporting News. "I didn't know what to feel. I wasn't happy. I felt bad for their kids and didn't know what to tell our kids."

Before anyone blame the state of Ohio for not having a mercy rule to halt such a game, it’s worth noting that it does. However, that rule calls for games to end abruptly if one team holds a 10-run lead after five innings and does not have provisions for games that get far out of hand earlier. In the case of Licking Heights and Harvest Prep, the game was called after three innings because of encroaching darkness, not the astounding 65-0 score.

While there is no defending a 65-0 final score, it appears that Boyer tried – or offered to try -- just about every alternative at his disposal to minimize the damage. At one point Boyer claims he went to the game’s home plate umpire and offered to have his players bunt and then step on the plate to guarantee an out.

The umpire’s response to that possibility? Boyer made that clear, and hinted at its irony.

There are a number of new recruiting rules that should have a profound effect on how colleges are able to connect with athletes in the future. While most press attention has focused on the ability of coaches to connect with athletes via phone and social media much more frequently, there’s a more insidious change that could have an even larger impact on the future of college basketball and football.

New UCLA leader Steve Alford is among the top NCAA coaches to hire top prep coaches — Getty

As of now, the previous disincentives intended to keep colleges from hiring top prep coaches as a means of landing top recruits are gone. And as a result, some of the nation’s most impressive high school basketball coaches are becoming the nation’s newest assistant college basketball coaches.

[Also: James Michael McAdoo’s return boosts North Carolina’s hoops title hopes]

Specifically, two of the nation’s most notable coaches departed to join collegiate staffs in the past two weeks alone. First, new UCLA coach Steve Alford hired Indianapolis (In.) Park Tudor High coach Ed Schilling as one of his assistants with the Bruins. The connection between Alford and Schilling is as simple as their geographic background; both Alford and Schilling grew up in Indiana.

The connection between Duncanville (Tx.) High coach Danny Henderson and Boise State is significantly more tenuous. The coach, who previously molded superstar Marcus Smart as the coach at Flower Mound (Tx.) Marcus High, jumped at the chance to become Boise State’s newest assistant coach when he predecessor with the Broncos, Dave Wojcik, was named the new head coach at San Jose State.

The shift from prep hoops to college is a notable one because of the ethical issues it raises. While no one can fault a longtime high school coach for trying to get ahead, any advantage they receive in trying to bring their former charges on board at their new schools would be seen as outside the bounds of appropriate contact and conduct.

Perhaps that’s why the NCAA is due for a new look at putting recruiting restrictions on former high school coaches and their former prep programs, at least for a year or so.

A high school baseball coach resigned rather than face more devastating punishment after stepping over the line on social media, where he reportedly sent text messages to a student.

The Brindlee Mountain baseball team, without coach Nick Garner, as it will be for the rest of the 2013 season — Brindlee Mountain High School

As reported by the Tennessee Valley NBC affiliate WHNT, Marshall County (Al.) Brindlee Mountain High head baseball coach Nick Garner resigned after accusations emerged that he had sent text messages to a student. While one might assume that the messages sent were broadly inappropriate, there’s no firm indication that’s the case. Rather, officials investigated both Garner’s phone and that of the unnamed student involved and reportedly found no inappropriate texts whatsoever.

Still, Brindlee Mountain has a strict no cell phone policy, which led the Marshall County Superintendent to confront Garner about the messages. Rather than face a longer investigation and potential punishment from the Marshall County School Board, Garner sent in his letter of resignation.

“We just got a report that he had been texting, and then it just kind of filtered in that it was a student involved. We just told him that we weren’t going to put up with that, and he resigned,” Marshall County Superintendent Tim Nabors told WHNT.

“If there is what we feel like is a desperate need [for a deeper investigation] then we’ll pursue it further … Anything like that we turn into the state department and then if there’s anything further investigation that goes on, they’ll do that.”

Much has been written about the threat that social media poses to young athletes. When they are feted at a party, they tend to tweet about it. Those tweets then tend to get noticed by coaches and, big surprise, the athletes suddenly look a lot less driven and promising than they did before those tweets and photos surfaced.

Former Don Bosco Prep cornerback Yuri Wright, who was expelled for x-rated Twitter messages — Rivals.com

Yet some coaches are now speaking up about high school athletes tweeting and the hidden dangers of the practice, namely that perpetual social media involvement is a sign that athletes aren’t spending any time studying or doing other worthwhile things with their time.

As noted by longtime Rivals.com analyst and columnist Edgy Tim, who writes a column for the Chicago Tribune, a number of unnamed coaches were all too happy to speak up about their issues with the social media revolution and its invasion of the high school sports space.

First, athletes need to know that coaches see everything that they’re posting … and yes, they are keeping track.

"We see everything from Twitter conversations to friend requests on Facebook to pictures from last night's party on Instagram," a Big East assistant football coach told Edgy Tim. "We see it all and we share that information back and forth in a moment's notice."

Yet they are also keeping an extremely close eye on how often their prospective athletes are tweeting, too, a concern which is emerging as just as pressing as what the athletes are focused on.

"It's really honestly as disturbing seeing how often a kid will post/tweet out messages than the actual content," a Big Ten recruiting coordinator said. "Some kids, I swear never put their phones down. I know you have different programs where you can load up posts, but we know the difference right away.

"Does this kid ever study?"

Much has been made about recruiting young athletes for high school football and basketball programs at successively younger ages. Still, what Tyreke Johnson is on the verge of may be a new threshold.

Trinity Catholic 7th grade football star Tyreke Johnson — Trinity Catholic football

As reported by MaxPreps, Johnson is the younger brother of DeAndre Johnson, a top quarterback prospect out of Jacksonville (Fl.) First Coast School. Johnson earned national acclaim in both of his first two seasons, has started each and every game of his high school career and already holds a host of Division I scholarship offers. DeAndre Johnson has already committed to Florida State and stands as the coup of the Seminoles’ current recruiting class of 2015.

DeAndre Johnson’s younger brother Tyreke is still in seventh grade, but according to coaches, he’s already on the verge of receiving many of the offers that DeAndre Johnson began receiving two years later.

It would be a stretch for any school to offer a scholarship to a seventh grader, even if they had a dominant skill or starred at a position like quarterback. That’s what makes the younger Johnson’s rise all the more remarkable: He doesn’t even know where he’ll end up playing in high school.

So far, Tyreke has played at quarterback, running back or in the defensive backfield. He could even be a wide receiver. He’s a great athlete, but that’s about all anyone can confirm at this point.

Still, MaxPreps reported that Tyeke Johnson is truly on the precipice of a monumental recruiting breakthrough. No position player has ever received a Division I scholarship offer while in the seventh grade, with quarterback David Sills the lone seventh grader to receive scholarship attention.

That could all change with Tyreke, who is reportedly already receiving major recruiting interest from the likes of Florida State, LSU, Miami, Ohio State and Clemson.

Most professional athletes use their day off to sit and relax, whether they focus their attention on movies, video games or other more productive efforts. Rays outfield Sam Fuld takes those productive efforts to a new level.

Sam Fuld, in a navy winter hat, still fits in with the Phillips Exeter baseball team — Twitter

As noticed by USA Today, Fuld spent his day off before Tampa’s series in Boston practicing with his former high school squad at Phillips Exeter. Fuld tweeted a photo of himself with the Phillips Exeter squad, which you can see above.

Before anyone worries that Fuld was jet hopping on a single day off just to get in more batting practice with a bunch of high school kids, Exeter’s location made the impromptu practice appearance an easy feat. Phillips Exeter is located in Exeter, N.H., approximately one hour from Boston.

Fuld’s hometown of Durham, N.H. is even closer, sitting just 23 minutes away, so it’s likely that the Rays outfielder grouped a trip home with his trip to his former baseball stomping grounds.

Of course, Fuld has come a long way since then, to a starting outfield role via the Cubs farm system. Apparently the Exeter facilities have improved in like fashion, as Fuld made clear in his tweet.

A former Colorado prep football player who suffered severe brain damage and paralyzation from a concussion during a practice five years ago won an $11.5 million lawsuit against the nation's largest football helmet manufacturer and several high school officials over the weekend, according to an Associated Press report.

The ruling could open up Riddell Sports Inc. and other helmet makers to countless lawsuits from athletes at all levels. Similar litigation has already been brought against Riddell in Los Angeles and by thousands of former NFL players, the AP reported.

Riddell Sports Inc. must pay $3.1 million in damages to a paralyzed former Colorado prep football player -- Riddell.com

After deliberating until 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, a Denver jury ordered Riddell -- makers of the Official Helmet of the NFL -- to pay 27 percent of the damages ($3.1 million) to former Trinidad (Colo.) High football player Rhett Ridolfi for failing to sufficiently warn its customers of concussion dangers.

Ridolfi suffered a concussion in an August 2008 football practice and was not rushed to a hospital. When he was later diagnosed with severe brain damage and paralyzation on his left side, the family sued Riddell as well as several Trinidad coaches and administrators.

Ricky Watters is back in football, just not at the level that most associate him with.

The new Oak Ridge football coach Ricky Watters during his Seattle days — Getty Images

As reported by the Orlando Sentinel, and brought to Prep Rally’s attention by USA Today, the former 49ers Super Bowl champion running back was named the new head football coach at Orlando (Fl.) Oak Ridge High. Watters doesn’t have any prep football coaching experience, so he will be jumping directly into the deep end by attempting to lead a competitive program in Florida from Day One.

Of course, Watters has plenty of experience in football in general. The former running back starred for the 49ers, Eagles and Seahawks over the course of a 10-year career in which he averaged more than 1,000 yards per season.

Interestingly, Watters will be replacing another former NFL player who made his name at Oak Ridge. Former coach Elijah Williams served admirably at the Orlando school before leaving to take an assistant coaching position at Florida A&M during the 2013 offseason. Oak Ridge won six or more games in five of Williams' six seasons leading the program.

Since finishing his professional career and re-settling in Central Florida, Watters has reportedly served as a motivational speaker for at-risk youth in Central Florida, efforts that earned Watters a spot in the Central Florida Sports Hall of Fame.