Let's not beat around the bush: What Nicolai "Nico" Calabria pulled off Wednesday in Massachusetts has to be one of the greatest goals ever scored. That's not because of the arc of his shot or the power of his header. It's because Nico Calabria only has one leg, and he scored one of the most acrobatic goals of the season in an able-bodied, varsity soccer game.

Calabria is a high school senior who competes for the Concord-Carlisle (Mass.) High soccer team. He was the captain of the junior varsity squad as a junior. He is also a wrestler for the Patriots. He does all these things with just one leg, which is about as remarkable an achievement as one can come across.

On the soccer pitch, Calabria motors up and down the field on crutches. Incredibly, they don't seem to keep him out of the action much, either, because Calabria can really move on his two crutches, as he showed with his celebration after his recent goal during C-C's 9-0 victory against Newton (Mass.) South High.

Massachusetts teen Nico Calabria, who is a one-legged soccer star — TeamUSAAmpSoccer.com

How he managed to score that goal, however, is more remarkable still. Balancing on his crutches, Calabria positioned himself in the penalty box for an oncoming Concord-Carlisle corner. As the ball floated in, Calabria was in position to get his boot on the ball, if he could get it high enough to make contact.

What followed next was incredible, with Calabria swinging his leg as if he was attempting an overhead volley. He made contact with the inswinging corner with his leg over his head like a full scissor kick, and the ball sailed into the net with ease.

Even if you've already watched the goal above once, go back and check it out again. It's well worth it. It would easily qualify as one of the top goals of the week if Calabria had taken the shot with both of his lower limbs, let alone scoring it with one.

That Calabria has even made it to the Concord-Carlisle varsity soccer team is a major accomplishment. The Patriots are among the strongest teams in the Dual County League (DCL) each year, and the DCL hosts some of the best boys soccer in the Boston area. Suffice it to say, Concord-Carlisle doesn't need Calabria on the field just to make up the numbers. He's there on his own merit.

Everything in Texas is bigger, including high school football. Cowboys Stadium has proved powerful testament to that over the past two seasons, hosting the state's championship football games (all classifications of them in 2011) and bringing in significant revenue as a result.

Reliant Stadium, which hopes to host the Texas state title games in the future — Getty

How much revenue has Cowboys Stadium derived from the one-off high school events? Enough that the stadium has sparked an impromptu bidding war for future state title games, to the degree that its biggest competitor to host the event, Houston's Reliant Stadium, recently purchased a retractable artificial turf surface so it could bid to play the game in Houston.

To be fair, Reliant's new surface will be the setting for other games, too, notably college tussles like the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas and potential crosstown showdowns between Rice and Houston. Still, Reliant Stadium officials have been vocal for more than a year about their desire to host the game.

Just think: Two professional football franchises in a fight over prep football title games. If it sounds odd to you, you're not alone … but you're also probably not a Texan.

As noted by the Houston Chronicle, Mark Miller, the man who oversees the Reliant complex in whole, said that the decision to purchase the artificial turf field was made to try and save the natural grass for NFL action. Still, there's little chance that the opportunity to host big time high school games didn't play some part in the final deliberations over whether or not to pull the trigger on the rather sizable outlay for the new field.

Meet Jayden Scott. He may only be 8 years old, but he's already produced a seminal example of perseverance during a remarkable youth football touchdown run.

The video you see above shows Scott absolutely refusing to go down on what appears to be a 45-yard touchdown run in a game against an unidentified league rival that, sadly (but probably appropriately), appears to be playing in Raiders uniforms.

The way young Scott was running, the NFL Raiders might have struggled to bring him down, too (we kid, we kid). The running back completely flattened one would-be tackler behind the line of scrimmage, then bounced to the right and trotted down the sideline, bucking an entire crew of defenders in the secondary.

At one point, five mini-Raiders players appeared to be trying to bring Scott down. Over the course of the run, he either ran over, around or through practically his opponent's entire defensive roster. They all failed to bring Scott down, and he went to the end zone, flashing shades of Walter Payton throughout the dynamic scoring gallop. He's even wearing the right jersey number.

In late April, then 13-year-old Keeling Pilaro gained national attention for being banned from competing in the sport he loves -- field hockey -- simply because he was too good. Three and a half months later, ban overturned, Pilaro returned to a high school field at last, joining up with his Southampton (N.Y.) High teammates in a 5-0 victory against area rival Walt Whitman (N.Y.) High.

Southampton male field hockey star Keeling Pilaro — 1010 WINS

As documented by Newsday, CBS News and the Associated Press, among other sources, Pilaro didn't score during his squad's one-sided, season-opening victory. Still, the 4-foot-8 dynamo said that it was an enormous relief to finally be back playing the sport that he grew up with ... and intends to keep competing in as long as he can.

Of course, how long Pilaro will be allowed to remain on the pitch remains very much a matter for debate. When Pilaro was cleared to take part in the 2012 varsity season by an area athletics committee, he was not granted blanket eligibility for the remainder of his high school career. Rather, the male athlete was told he could compete as a freshman, after which his eligibility would be re-examined.

It's far too early to even guess what an eligibility re-examination will find.

Yet for now, that isn't Pilaro's concern. Rather, he's more focused on helping Southampton notch as many wins as it can, all while competing alongside girls he can now call his friends.

For most teenage soccer players, scoring 10 goals in a season is quite a haul. Not Elliot Cassutt. The Minneapolis (Minn.) South High standout decided 10 was a reasonable haul for a game, then went out and scored 10 in a recent game against Minneapolis (Minn.) Henry High.

Minneapolis South star Elliot Cassutt — iHigh

Cassutt's 10 goals were part of an embarrassing 18-0 South rout which kept the Tigers on track to dominate the Twin Cities area. Unsurprisingly, the 10 goals were good for a single-game state record in Minnesota.

Despite the final score, Cassutt's single-game explosion was no fluke. The senior is the reigning Gatorade Player of the Year for boys soccer in Minnesota and scored an astonishing 46 goals in 2010. That mark is good for a state record itself.

On a national scale, he was an NSCAA All-American to go with his All-State and All-Metro honors. Still, his goal haul as a junior was much more modest, with 15 goals and 12 assists to his name by the end of his third varsity season.

Considering his 10 goals against Henry, it seems overwhelmingly likely that Cassutt will easily pass that number as a senior.

As it is, before Tuesday Cassutt was already one of the names on the top line in the state record book for most goals in a single game; he had previously notched seven in one contest, which was tied for best in state history.

A Georgia head football coach has been suspended for multiple games following a practice incident which some might even misguidedly consider humorous: He kicked a player in the rear end.

The Americus-Sumter coaching staff, with Michael Pollock at center — Americus-Sumter football

As first reported by the Albany Herald and WALB-TV, Americus-Sumter (Ga.) High football coach Michael Pollock will sit on the sidelines during Friday's game against Albany as ongoing punishment for an incident at one of the team's practices, when Pollock reportedly booted an unidentified player in the butt.

Americus-Sumter head coach Michael Pollock — Americus-Sumpter football

The incident clearly qualifies as abuse, albeit of the more unorthodox and bizarre variety. There has been no indication whether the player in question was injured, or if he was the person who reported the incident to authorities.

Regardless, the interaction was serious enough that it pushed Pollock off the team's sidelines last Friday during the team's 34-18 victory against Macon County (Ga.) High, and will keep him there again this week.

There is no indication of how long Pollock will remain on the sidelines, though it is telling that the school has said he is still its football coach and athletic director. It seems likely that if he was going to be fired, he already would have been.

In the meantime, Pollock's assistant Chris Wade has served as the team's head coach in Pollock's stead, and will continue to do so until the coach is allowed to return. The temporary head coach said that the entire incident had created significant uncertainty with the team and on the Americus-Sumter campus.

In 2011, Whittier (Calif.) La Serna High entered the season with high hopes that quickly turned to embarrassment when it yielded an astonishing 84 points in an 84-21 rout at the hands of West Covina (Calif.) High in the Southeast Division championship game.

The LaSerna football team is cruising a year after suffering an ignominious 61-point loss — WUHSD.org

This year a similar letdown has not been coming. Through four games, La Serna is 4-0, and they're winning with style. And if they needed any official exorcism of past ghosts, the La Serna squad got it on Friday by rolling past traditional power Westlake Village (Calif.) Westlake High by the final score of 38-9.

As noted by the Los Angeles Times, the 2012 La Serna squad that is cruising through Southern California opponents is eerily similar to the one left crestfallen in 2011.

Sixteen of the 2012 La Serna starters were in the starting lineup a year earlier, and nearly all of the other players who have filled in to lost holes were also in attendance when La Serna was routed in the divisional title game.

For his part, La Serna coach Margarito Beltran said there was no doubt about why his team had come out of the gates as impressively as it has.

It was, without question, one of the most impressive offensive outbursts in Washington state history. Across four regulation periods, two teams combined for 131 points, 1,607 total yards and enough extra points to make one's head swim. The losing quarterback finished with 527 total yards on his own, setting a league record.

The Kentlake football team racked up 916 yards of offense in a single game — Vimeo

The final score in this epic encounter was Kentlake 76, Puyallup 55. And to think, the head coach of the victorious Kentlake (Wash.) High squad played as a linebacker in high school.

"You feel like you are unstoppable offensively," Kentlake head football coach Chris Paulson told the Tacoma News Tribune. "But the same 11 kids defensively could not seem to stop anybody, either."

As the News Tribune noted, there is no official record for most combined yards in a single game, but there is every possibility that such a mythical mark may have been achieved on Friday night. The game surpassed a notably offensive 2011 game between Owensville (Mo.) High and St. James (Mo.) High which ESPN dubbed a likely record-holder.

Naturally, that means nothing officially, except that the Kentlake-Puyallup faceoff had truly remarkable statistics. As one might expect, those impressive yet esoteric stats ranged from the fundamental -- those 1,607 yards, for instance -- to the truly unique. The most out of left field of the bunch probably belonged to Kentlake's unspecified kicker, who successfully converted 10 points-after-touchdown. Some schools would be thrilled with that return for a full season.