First it was the NHL’s Winter Classic, taking an indoor game back to its outdoor roots, generating good will and fan excitement in the process. In 2011 college basketball tried to duplicate the act and honor the military at the same time, holding a game on an aircraft carrier. That worked, too, leading to plenty of imitation acts in 2013 (even if some never got played).

The Venice Beach basketball courts, which will feature a sanctioned game — Hoopedia.NBA.com

Now high school basketball is aiming to catch the same outdoor lightning in a bottle, with two Southern California teams facing off in the sunshine on the legendary playground courts on Venice Beach.

As reported by MaxPreps, North Hollywood (Cal.) Oakwood School will face off against Santa Monica (Cal.) Pacifica Christian School on Saturday in a game that will be played on the high traffic courts of Venice Beach, a site made famous by Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes in ‘White Men Can’t Jump’.

Remember Woody and Wesley in White Men Can't Jump? — IMDB

While some might be concerned about distractions from nearby street performers, Oakwood athletic director Eric Walter said playing amidst a carnival atmosphere was the goal the entire time.

"We are a small school and always looking for things to heighten the experience for kids and make them feel special," Walter told MaxPreps. "I just thought, 'What's the most iconic place ever to play basketball?' Millions of people visit Venice Beach, it has all the jesters, jugglers and guys that walk on glass. It should be a fun thing."

It might be fun, but the coach who reports to Walter, Oakwood boys basketball coach Alex Barkouras, might not be quite so thrilled about taking his team outdoors in a sanctioned league game. Oakwood is currently in the midst of a 10-game winning streak and is a likely league champion if it can keep momentum going. Something tells Prep Rally that playing a game outside, where things like sunlight and wind could affect shooting and ball handling, isn’t the best way to keep a team laser focused.

Ray Lewis as a senior at Kathleen High School — Seth Poppel/Yearbook LibraryRay Lewis enters the Super Bowl as one of the most celebrated defensive players in NFL history. He is a one-of-a-kind blend of explosive power and unrestrained emotion, dominant enough to occasionally carry a franchise on his back or, more often, make a one-off big play when the Ravens need it most.

Before he landed with the Ravens franchise, Lewis was a star collegiate linebacker at the University of Miami. Before that, he was a prep sports superstar, an all-everything football player and a dominant wrestler. Yet on one occasion Lewis was decidedly second best, and the man who beat him might just be his match athletically, too.

[Photos: NFL's top stars – before the fame]

You can see Lewis as a high school senior from the Kathleen High yearbook above courtesy of our friends at Snakkle. You can see the likes of Colin Kaepernick and Jim Harbaugh in high school at Snakkle as well, with USAToday also featuring a full album of Super Bowl stars as high school phenoms, too.

As noted by MaxPreps, Lewis won the Florida Class 4A wrestling title during his senior season in 1993. Yet the previous season, Lewis was outdone in the state final by a wrestler named Sam Ancona, a Miami (Fla.) Columbus High superstar who topped Lewis 8-5 in the season’s final bout for both grapplers.

You can see the famous bout between Ancona and Lewis in the video above, with Ancona landing a takedown of Lewis in the final seconds of the bout to notch an 8-5 win, and a state title with it.

As it turns out, that was hardly the only time that Ancona pulled of a remarkable athletic feat. After graduating from Columbus, Ancona went on to wrestle at the University of Virginia. After earning his degree he even tried his hand at amateur boxing.

Chicago (Ill.) Simeon High senior Jabari Parker is extremely talented at basketball. This is not news. He has been the top ranked recruit in the Class of 2013 for just about as long as anyone has bothered ranking the Class of 2013, right up until Huntington (W.V.) Prep senior Andrew Wiggins reclassified into the Class of 2013 this fall and stole his thunder. Even if Wiggins stole a bit of the gloss from Parker’s spotlight, he didn’t do anything to diminish the Chicago native’s sublime skill set, which Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski fully intends to exploit come fall 2013.

Chicago Simeon superstar Jabari Parker — Rivals.com/USPresswire

In the meantime, Parker has appeared on magazine covers, in stories throughout the media far and wide (including here at Prep Rally) and generally received more hype than any prep hoops recruit since O.J. Mayo. In short, he’s a bona fide phenomenon. Now, some might say a bit prematurely, he’s even had his jersey number retired.

During Simeon’s senior night victory against Chicago (Ill.) Harlan High, Parker had his number retired in the school’s gym. His number 22 jersey was raised to the rafters alongside fellow Simeon senior superstar Kendrick Nunn, who has committed to play for Illinois. Parker and Nunn are the only players in the rafters who don’t have NBA experience or a legendary back story, joining Bulls superstar point guard Derrick Rose, Bobby Simmons and Ben "Benji" Wilson.

[Also: Small child runs onto court during Baylor-Oklahoma game]

Incredibly, the ceremony came at halftime of Simeon’s 73-54 victory, an awkward injunction in an otherwise one-sided rout. Perhaps Simeon’s dominance was to be expected, even if Parker and Nunn appeared surprised to be honored with so much of their senior season’s still remaining.

"If Kendrick and I want to be remembered as two of the greatest players that have ever played at Simeon, we have to finish this year," Parker told the Chicago Sun-Times. "A lot of hard work and dedication has gone into this and we want to finish strong."

A husband and wife from Orlando each coach separate high school girls basketball teams in the area and both have their squads ranked No. 1 in their respective districts. Luckily, they won't have to face each other in the state tournament.

Alex de la Fe has served as head coach of Evans (Orlando, Fla.) High for the past five seasons. His Trojans (18-8) face Lake Howell (Winter Park, Fla.) in the District 4 championship on Thursday. In her first season at the helm of Orlando's First Academy, Julie de la Fe's Royals (17-6) host the first round of the District 5 tourney on Thursday.

Thankfully, Alex's Trojans play at the Class 7A level and Julie's Royals play in Class 3A, so the de la Fe family won't need to spend any extra money on marital counseling come state tournament time, when they're expecting their first child in late February.

"We do have some pressure on there with the kid coming, but we're excited," Alex told the Orlando Sentinel. "We both love the game and love being around the kids. I don't know that we feel so much pressure, because it's just a game, but I know that we're excited. We're excited about going into the playoffs and seeing how well our teams are going to be doing. And we're definitely excited about the kid. We're super excited."

The due date of Feb. 20 for their baby boy falls on the day the Class 3A Final Four begins.

"If he waits until then, and we get that far, that would be really interesting," added Julie, "but until then it's scouting, it's just getting our teams ready and it actually keeps the focus off all of the pregnancy stuff a little bit -- just being focused on basketball."

Amidst all of the talk about Ray Lewis' deer antler spray and Dan Marino's love child, some of the good stories in the NFL have been overshadowed during Super Bowl week. Now, a superstar from a team not playing in Sunday's game has made a powerful play to steal the spotlight, all by doing the right thing.

J.J. Watt proposes to Breanna, his biggest 6-year-old fan — Facebook

America, J.J. Watt apparently really is a good guy. After seeing video of a 6-year-old Texans fan bawling because she was not old enough to marry the Texas defensive lineman, Watt tracked her down on Facebook. The All-Pro offered to meet his biggest (and perhaps youngest) fan in person, but actually had much bigger plans in store.

As brought to Prep Rally's attention by Deadspin, when the two met, Watt brought flowers and a ring pop. He got down on one knee and asked young Breanna to be his "pretend wife for the day." She accepted, took the ring and gave Watt a huge hug.

In fact, Breanna gave Watt lots of hugs. She posed for pictures with him wearing both her Texans outfit (Texans shirt and little Ugg-style boots) and the J.J. Watt game jersey he gave her. As one might expect, that jersey was big enough to double as a formal dress for the tyke.

Watt posted photos of the encounter to his Facebook profile on Wednesday afternoon, with some 50,000 social media users "liking" it. He also spoke about his rendevous with Breanna on Yahoo! Sports Radio on Thursday from the Super Bowl.

"I cant be there every time, I can't give every autograph. It makes me sad," Watt told Y! Sports. "Someone sent me the video of the little girl, [Wednesday] I got to meet her and propose to her with a ring pop. Gave her a big '99' jersey which was her wedding dress for the day. We had our first dance and everything. The artist was Justin Bieber.

"It was really fun ... We're registered at Toys R' Us, Build a Bear Workshop ... it was fun."

A high school basketball game in Iowa proved to be just a sidenote to a love story when a prep basketball coach used his players and a handful of other students from the school to propose to his longtime girlfriend.

The coach in the video above -- which went viral on Reddit on Wednesday evening -- is Clinton (Ia.) Central DeWitt High sophomore boys basketball coach Brandon Barnhart. All the players in the basketball jerseys are on Barnhart's roster. Naturally, they weren't enough to put on a full-court sing off, so Barnhart enlisted a handful of other Central DeWitt students to choreograph a simple dance to a Bruno Mars hit.

Of course, it didn't take Barnhart's girlfriend, who is identified only as Hannah, long to figure out what was happening (well, it took right up to the first chorus, when "I think I wanna marry you," hit the speakers). Still, after initial embarrassment she was able to pull herself together, drink in the entire scene, applaud a pretty impressive rendition of the worm and collect a dozen roses from the sophomore hoops squad after a variety of pirouettes.

The rest of the scene played out exactly as one would expect, with Barnhart strolling down the mid-court line between two phalanxes of teenagers, then dropping to a knee in front of Hannah and asking for her hand. The emotional acceptance had tears, a warm embrace, a nice kiss and then plenty of applause as the future Mr. and Mrs. Barnhart led a two-by-two procession of the sophomore basketball team back through a tunnel of Central DeWitt students.

Just more than a month after 18 people lost their lives in a senseless, tragic school shooting in Connecticut, a North Dakota youth hockey association has kicked off what may be the single worst-timed fundraising campaign ever: A raffle for assault rifles.

As reported by Fargo network KVLY, the West Fargo (N.D.) Hockey Association is offering some 200 guns up in a raffle aimed at raising rougly $90,000 for the youth hockey organization. Raffle tickets are being sold for $40 per ticket, with three Rock River AR-15 assault rifles among the most prized items in the entire draw. The Rock River AR-15 model is incredibly similar to the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle that was used in the Newtown, Conn. shootings in December.

West Fargo officials said early ticket sales for the March 15 raffle have been brisk, even if the group acknowledges that the prizes on offer make the entire promotion awkward.

A promotional poster for the West Fargo gun raffle — West Fargo Hockey Association

"The timing is a little awkward," West Fargo mayor Rich Mattern told the Huffington Post. "I think that's a fair statement to say, given the discussion going on around the country. …

"[The fundraiser is] going to raise eyebrows.”

An interview that the raffle organizer Mike Prochnow gave to Fargo radio station KFGO indicated that plans for the raffle developed in August, well before the Newtown massacre. Still, no one in the organization seems to have stepped forward and advocated cancelling the fundraiser despite the fact that the West Fargo league serves children as young as 4; even younger than the victims in the Newtown shooting.

For his part, West Fargo Hockey Association president Carl Helgerson said that the raffle was needed to help pay for a dramatic increase in much-needed ice time for teams across the organization’s age range.

Peyton Aldridge is a legitimate Division I basketball prospect, the kind of player with both the talent and size to build a solid highlight reel across four prep seasons and whatever college game action comes after.

Unfortunately for Aldridge, at the moment the most notable play he’s been involved in is one of the stranger bloopers you’ll see, where a loose ball ricocheted directly off his face into the waiting hands of an opponent in the paint. The result was a picture perfect assist -- unintentional though it may have been -- for the other team.

The clip above was taken from the 2013 Dunk 4 Diabetes, an Ohio tournament that donates proceeds to the American Diabetes Association. The event has received cameos from high profile coaches like Kentucky head man John Calipari in the past, marking it as a mid-winter prep hoops recruiting hotbed.

Aldridge was there to compete with his Warren (Ohio) LaBrae High squad against Malvern (Ohio) High. The 6-foot-7 junior certainly seemed to be holding his own, but found himself boxed out on a play near the hoop. That’s when one of his teammates swerved in for an impressive block, only for the rejection to deflect off the Malvern post player’s hand, flat off Aldridge’s face and right back into the waiting hands of the Malvern player, who quickly dropped in a layup.

It was the kind of play that would be impossible to reenact, though it is awfully enjoyable to watch more than once.