But where does competitive toughness end and criminal activity begin?

That might be in the eye of the beholder, or depend on who wins the match and who loses the match, as one teenager discovered last week.

West Valley City and Brigham City were playing for the gold medal in the Under-19 division at the Utah Summer Games in Cedar City on June 18. The teams, made up of high-school-age boys, were extremely physical with each other, witnesses say, but the referees did a good job of maintaining control, issuing fouls and warnings to both sides.

At one point, a West Valley City player and a Brigham City player got into an altercation and the Brigham City player went down. Play was stopped while he was attended to, but he got up and continued to play.

West Valley City won the game and, after the refs had left the field, a parent from the Brigham City side told the West Valley City coach not to leave because she was calling the police to press assault charges against the West Valley City player.

Suddenly, five police cars and an ambulance were on the field. Paramedics spent time with the Brigham City player, but did not transport him. The police then questioned the West Valley City player outside the presence of his coach or any other adult. They eventually cited him for disorderly conduct.

Message to high school football players: Don't tackle anybody too hard this fall. If you do, make sure your team doesn't win. Otherwise, you might be deemed a criminal.

Under the rug? During a recent meeting of the governor's task force studying the academic achievement gap between minority and non-minority students, the discussion turned to changing the name from the Achievement Gap Task Force to the Student Achievement Task Force.

Committee member Howard Stephenson, a state senator from Draper, explained that "achievement gap" might be divisive language for some legislators.

Heaven forbid that legislators might be seen as trying to help minorities.

Mixed messages: Richard Arner, who lives near the mouth of Parleys Canyon, called Utah Power about 2 p.m. Wednesday when the power in his neighborhood went out after a dry, windy thunderstorm.

He was told that crews had been dispatched at 2:10 p.m. and power should be restored by 6:30 p.m. He called again at 5:48 and was told crews had been dispatched at 5:10 p.m. and power should be restored at 9:30 p.m. Power was restored at 9:56 p.m..

On Thursday, the power again went out at 6:58 a.m. for maintenance work. In his subsequent calls to the power company he was told one time it would be restored by 11 a.m. and another time it would be restored by 1 p.m. It was restored between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.

Professional correspondence: A licensed cosmetologist recently was mailed an application for renewal of her license from Salt Lake City.

The instructions tell her to mail her renewal fee to Salt Lake City "Corportion."

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Paul Rolly welcomes e-mail at prolly@sltrib.com.