With her pads on, Gab Gioffre looks like any other field hockey goalie. Heavily padded, Gioffre is athletic and, above all else, appears extremely determined to keep out anything that gets near her, whether thats a ball, a stray stick or even a marauding opponent. It's only when she takes off her pads that it becomes clear she's a little bit different: She doesn't have a left hand.

According to a column by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Lou Rabito, Gioffre was born without a left hand. Yet that hasn't held the Archbishop Wood (Penn.) senior back, primarily because she refuses to let it. The starting goalie has been a stalwart support beam for a rebuilding year at Archbishop Wood, helping the team overcome a 1-5 start to reach 4-7, 4-6 in the highly competitive Catholic League.

Yet field hockey is only one of Gioffre's athletic talents. The senior has swam competitively and is now in her second season with the field hockey program. She used to play basketball in middle school and even

Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you conclusive proof of why it is never a good idea to kick, punt or otherwise force a football to travel through the air when facing a 40-mph wind.

The video you see above, courtesy of Farmington (Minn.) High School and the Farmington Independent, comes from a Section 1AAAAA playoff game on Tuesday night between Farmington and Lakeville North (Minn.) High School. Lakeville North cruised to a 39-14 victory in the game, but the contest was more notable for being played in conditions that included gusts of wind that reached 40 mph. The kickoff above was the most glaring example of the wind's distortion on the game, as a strong boot from Lakeville North's kicker only got the ball 12 yards behind the original line of scrimmage.

[Video: Strong winds responsible for soccer own goal]

That's right, the game's second kickoff technically accounted for minus-12 yards, and the kicks that followed later in

We use the question to ask a pertinent question because, quite frankly, we're not entirely sure if untackleable (or un-tackleable or untackle-able, for that matter) actually is any manner of appropriate speech. Google seems to want to change the word to untakeable, which is not the same thing at all. After checking out a host of highlight clips this week that flew entirely below the radar, we think it should be. A few of these clips are testaments to why it would make our life -- and other people's future descriptions of great high school plays -- a heck of a lot easier.

• Parker Buck, Bonneville (Idaho) vs. Rigby (Idaho): Nothing beats a game-winning touchdown with no time on the clock, does it? We sure don't think so, which is what makes this clip so great. This last second Idaho heave by Bonneville senior quarterback Parker Buck may not qualify as a "Hail Mary", but there's little doubt that it answered his team's prayers.

• Tyree Marzetta, Abraham Lincoln (Calif.) JV vs. Balboa

A near-record game near Kansas City Thursday night turned tragic Friday morning when a star running back was pronounced dead hours after he arrived at a hospital following an injury suffered in the game. Spring Hill (Kan.) senior running back, linebacker and homecoming king Nathan Stiles died Friday morning at University of Kansas hospital in Kansas City, just hours after his teammates finished off an astounding 99-72 victory over Osawatomie in the season finale for both teams.

While no official comment has been made on how Stiles suffered the injury, NBCActionNews.com first reported that a Spring Hill parent said Stiles intercepted an Osawatomie pass during the second period of Thursday night's game and suffered a hard hit. The running back reportedly made it to the sideline after the play but collapsed shortly thereafter.

The Miami County Republic, the closest local newspaper to Spring Hill, spoke to Spring Hill coach Anthony Orrick, who said the player complained of head pain before

A few years ago, Cross Keys (Ga.) High's football team was struggling with its snap cadence at the line of scrimmage. Worried that his team would face a gaggle of penalties -- or that simplified cadences would be too easy for opponents to anticipate -- Cross Keys coach David Radford knew something had to change. Then it hit him: Nowhere does it say that a cadence on the line of scrimmage needs to be in English.

Overnight, Radford changed all of the team's cadences to Spanish, and the program has never switched back.

"They thought it was a joke, being that we had some kids who didn't know Spanish," Radford told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Michael Carvell. "I told them not to worry, that it will be easy to pick up. And it has."

Radford told Carvell that the transition was so smooth because a majority of Cross Keys' players are of Hispanic heritage. The school is located in eastern Brookhaven, one of Atlanta's most diverse neighborhoods, and the Cross Keys football team features

It's not unheard of for a long, drawn-out high school football game to finish at 11 p.m. A high school game starting at 11 p.m., on the other hand, is a different matter, particularly on a school night.

Amazingly, that's exactly what happened in West Texas last Thursday, when Tascosa (Texas) High (near Amarillo) travelled to Lubbock Coronado High. According to the Amarillo Globe-News, the game was scheduled to start at 7:30, but it encountered lengthy delays due to a string of weather maladies.

First there was hail. Then strong rains made starting the game impossible, and lighting moved in shortly thereafter, further delaying an official kickoff.

By the time the weather finally calmed down, it was 11 p.m. and the teams had to face either moving the game to another date or starting with a late kickoff. They chose the latter, for logistical reasons.

"It's 7:30 somewhere else in the world, right?" Tascosa linebacker Alejandro Magallanes told the Globe-News. "We wanted to play."

Yet it's

Last Friday, South New Jersey was host to a heated battle between two struggling teams. When the game was finally over, Sterling (N.J.) High coach Jarod Claybourn had to decide what to do with a game ball from his program's first win in two years. According to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Phil Anastasia, he chose the least-likely recipient in a choice which testified to Claybourn's class: He gave the ball to the other coach.

"I don't even know if I can put it into words," Gateway coach Mike Karp, the ball's recipient, told Anastasia. "We're two struggling programs. Somebody had to lose, and we came up on the short end of the scoreboard.

"But for him to do that, it just shows that we gained some respect that night. That means so much to our kids."

[Video: Team lets opponent with Down syndrome score touchdown]

Both teams were shooting for respect while carrying the baggage of epic losing streaks. Sterling entered having lost 17 straight games, sitting at 0-5 in 2010. Gateway was also

Maybe we spoke too soon when we proclaimed a pair of announcers from Arkansas the biggest overreacting homers in the land last week. It turns out they have some stiff competition from the state of Massachusetts.

2010_1022_Abington_vs_Rockland_Touchdown_Nullified from Norm Caseley on Vimeo.

The video you see above comes from last Friday's pitched battle between Abington and Rockland, both of which entered at 6-0, in which Rockland eventually pulled out a 21-12 win. That final scoreline is notable because of the play above -- which, to be fair, truly is an obvious backwards lateral -- which was returned by Abington for what should have been a touchdown.

[Rewind video: Announcer has crazy outburst after Bruins win]

Instead, officials ruled the ball dead as an incomplete pass, which is precisely when the announcers from Abington completely lost it. It's hard to narrow down complete highlights of the final 50 seconds of the full 56-second clip, but we'll try to put them in hierarchical