Nobody ever said turning around a losing Lady Rams basketball program was going to be easy.

Not after the Lady Rams went 0-20 last year, barely had enough players to field a starting varsity basketball team and didn't have enough players for a junior varsity or freshman team.

It wasn't the kind of blowout the Port Chester basketball Rams expected either on or off the court.

In sports parlance they call them "ballers," shorthand for solid athletes who play for the good of the team and the joy of the game.

To the uninformed viewer, it is just a huge letter O circling the high school football and soccer playing fields, a 440-yard circle that is exactly a quarter mile if you are measuring it and an eternity if you are running it at anything resembling full speed.

Three different races. Three different places. All at three different times revolving around local runners running the gamut from early to late teens to near 50 to a just turned 70 Track & Field mentor deserving of Port Chester legendary status to a deceased global immortal, an ex-FBI agent and World War II aerial gunner who became an Olympic world record holder as well as one of the greatest amateur runners of his era. So each one of their stories is different.

The way the ball is swishing through the net, zipping around the court, and being grabbed off the backboards during pre-season practices at Port Chester High School these days, this could be the year of the Ram hoop-wise with many happier returns than last year.

Thanksgiving has come and gone, leaving behind the remains of the day, turkey, stuffing and more. And in scholastic sports circles, that more leaves room for a top 10 sports listing of outstanding moments stored in the local athletic calendar memory bank dating back over the past few months, a thanks for the memories recollection in more ways than one.

It is 4:30 in the afternoon, the Latin rock music is playing, and the "dancers" are swaying, only they are moving to their own kind of primitive choreography, their own wrestling version of rock 'n' roll, shoulder shrugs, grunts, twists, turns, up-and-down moves, straining to get the upper hand in a sport that values head locks, pins, the ability to get up from the mat and throw somebody down and keep them down, all the while compiling points that will hopefully add up to a win.