Today starts the wrestling dual-team playoffs. Teams meet in four-team pods today, with the advancing team moving on to Thursday for another four-team pod. The state championships will be held at school sites on Saturday.

West Johnston, the Greater Neuse River 4-A Conference dual team wrestling champion, will host a pod of the NCHSAA 4-A dual team state playoffs at 6 p.m., Tuesday. The Wildcats (20-1) meet Holly Springs (18-3) in the opening round, while Panther Creek (18-2) takes on Hoke County (10-11) in the corresponding first round match.

No athletes from Cary Academy or Holly Springs High are ready to sign their letter-of-intent today — mainly because a number of them already have. Both schools were among the area leaders in fall signings.

The top six teams in the N&O girls high school basketball rankings remain unchanged, but the bottom half of the top dozen are shuffled.

Green Hope and Millbrook are firmly entrenched at the top.

The Piedmont Athletic 4-A Conference is so balanced that it is hard to get a read on which team is best.

Durham Riverside, which moves to No. 4 in the Raleigh News & Observer high school girls rankings this week, beat Northern Durham, which is ranked No. 5. Northern has a loss to No. 6 Durham Hillside. Northern beat Hillside last Friday.

Green Hope, Millbrook girls are Nos. 1 and 2, but much of the rest of the rankings are shaken.

I'll get into more detail later, but the Wake County school board has sharply increased the number of students under consideration for reassignment for the 2011-12 school year.

The biggest clump of additions to the plan come from agreeing to put into consideration these moves that staff said they wanted to recommend but didn't do so because it would have involved moving students who've already recently been reassigned. They're mostly involving cleaning up feeder patterns caused by the staff changing from the original three-year plan the nodes going to Walnut Creek Elementary.

Throw in a whole bunch of nodes, mostly agreed to from the Dec. 14 meeting,  that the board said they wanted to hear parents comment on. They're saying they're not necessarily going to move them.

Rarely in high school wrestling does a match come down to single digits, much less a final bout. But that happened twice on Wednesday night in the Tri-Nine Conference.

Grant Houser, senior, Holly Springs boys golf

Senior Grant Houser has committed to Campbell. As a junior for Holly Springs, Houser made the Tri-Nine's all-conference team with a 35.9 stroke average per nine holes — good for fourth overall.

By knocking off Green Hope for the second time this year, the Apex volleyball team claimed its third straight conference title on Monday.

Apex, undefeated at 19-0 (14-0) is ranked No. 15 in the nation and has now won three of the last four conference championships.