Sunday will be Senior Night for the Naperville Central and Naperville North hockey teams. The junior varsity game is at 5:40 p.m. Varsity follows the senior ceremony scheduled for 7:20 p.m. The puck drops at Seven Bridges Ice Arena in Woodridge.

Naperville North is 6-10 overall - 0-6 in DuPage Valley Conference play - and it looks like turning the season around just became more difficult. Huskies coach Mark Lindo said Tuesday that senior guard Danny Grimley and junior forward Arnas Gintautas could both be done for the season. Grimley has been playing through a stress fracture in his foot while Arnas Gintautas may need shoulder surgery for an injury suffered during football season

The Huskies travel to an improved West Chicago team on Friday for their only game scheduled this week.

"We're giving up a lot of easy looks on defense right now," Lindo said. "People are knocking down jump shots against us (and) we just lost a couple key people to injuries. And that's what we went through all last year and now we're doing that again."

Naperville North will honor its past and present on Friday night.

The school's Athletic Hall of Fame induction ceremony will begin around 6:45 p.m. in the main gym after the sophomore boys basketball game against Wheaton Warrenville South. Before the ceremony, the school will also recognize Huskies baseball coach Carl Hunckler for his upcoming entrance (Jan. 30-31) into the Illinois High School Baseball Coaches Association's Hall of Fame.

The seven-person North class of 2009 includes: Tim Carlson, a two-time IHSA state swimming champion; Aileen Guiney, an all-state soccer player; Rachel Karos, an all-DuPage Valley Conference athlete in volleyball, basketball and softball; Dan Pettigrew, another all-state soccer athlete who later played at Princeton; Bart Smith, a two-time IHSA state champion in the 300-meter hurdles; coach Stan Gruszka, a state Hall of Fame coach in both football and wrestling; and the late Gene Drendel, the widely-respected long-time Naperville educator.

Previous inductees include Jerry Hairston Jr., now of the Cincinnati Reds, and NFL veterans Chris Brown, Glenn Earl and Justin McCareins.

Gruszka in particular has a lasting legacy with the North football program. Its offensive linemen are still graded by the metrics the assistant introduced in the mid-1980s. As we wrote in this feature last October: The Huskies count knockdowns - for every two it's a dog bone helmet sticker. They track "TDBs" - touchdown-enabling blocks that clear the way for someone to run into the end zone. That warrants another bone. And whoever registers the hardest hit is named "Captain Crunch" and earns a Ziploc bag full of the cereal.

If anyone else has good stories about the class of 2009, post a comment and let us know.

-Ben Johnson, a sophomore midfielder out of Naperville North, will transfer from Western Illinois to play soccer at Saint Xavier, the Chicago university announced Tuesday. The Woodridge native previously played at Missouri State.

-White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper will run pitching camps in Lisle, LaGrange, Barrington, Tinley Park and Schererville, Ind. The Lisle sessions will be Jan. 24-25 for high school athletes and players ages 7-13. For more on the Bulls Sox Academy events, click here.

-Naperville's Centerfield Sports Academy will be running a pitching camp through Feb. 6 for players ages 13-18. The 90-minute sessions will be held three times a week for four-consecutive weeks. For more information, click here.

-Unbeaten Wheaton College (13-0) remains No. 1 in the D3hoops.com national Top 25 poll. North Central College (10-3) received votes in the same poll.

Jerry Hairston Jr. will play anywhere and everywhere for the team that gave him a chance when no one else would. That's essentially what the Naperville North graduate told Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News this week after agreeing to a one-year, $2 million contract, with $2 million more available in incentives.

Last season Hairston played six different positions in 80 games for the Reds and hit .326 with a .384 on-base percentage and 15 stolen bases. As McCoy points out:

The Reds were 25-19 when Hairston batted leadoff. His on-base average of .487 while batting leadoff was second best in the National League among leadoff batters with more than 150 plate appearances. Only L.A.'s Rafael Furcal was better.

Hairston expects to fill the No. 2 hole in the Cincinnati lineup, and could wind up shuttling between shortstop and the outfield. The short-term deal gives both sides flexibility, and Hairston the chance to prove that he's an everyday player who can last through a 162-game season.

"I just got really focused on just being healthy and once I got healthy, I felt like a completely different person," Hairston told the Sun last July in the Wrigley Field visiting clubhouse. "Like I tell everybody, the last couple years I felt like I was like 50 years old.

"Now I feel like I'm 25...I'm runnin' like I used to, runnin' like I should. I'm only 32 years old and I feel I got a good six-eight years left."

Naperville native Scott Hairston and the San Diego Padres avoided arbitration on Thursday and agreed to a one-year, $1.25 million contract. The day before his brother Jerry Hairston Jr. resigned with the Cincinnati Reds for one year at $2 million.

Last year Scott Hairston hit .248 with 17 home runs and 31 RBIs in 112 games. His season ended in late August after tearing a ligament in his left thumb. According to Tom Krasovic's Union-Tribune blog, the deal comes amid much economic uncertainty in San Diego. The franchise is up for sale, though former Arizona Diamondbacks managing partner Jeff Moorad and his investment group have emerged as a potential buyer.

Krasovic writes: Hairston, 28, is the seventh player signed by the Padres for 2009. The club has guaranteed more than $31 million to those seven and still must sign 33 other players as it attempts to meet a $40 million payroll mandated by owner John Moores.