Sobel, a Willow Glen resident, spends his days at Bellarmine College Preparatory and his nights practicing with a band, painting, creating films or acting in the school play. So when he received a call from YM Magazine, a national magazine based in New York City and aimed at teenage girls, he was a little confused. He soon discovered he'd been handpicked as one of 12 boys from the U.S. and Canada to compete in the Last Boy Standing contest, a year-long competition in which YM readers vote for their favorite guy each month and, by December, the final surviving contestant receives a $10,000 scholarship.

Sobel ended up in the magazine after Discovery Museum of San Jose Education Manager Linda Fischetti called Sobel's mother, Judy, for permission to give his name to YM Magazine for a story it was doing about young filmmakers. They never heard back about the story. Instead, the magazine called and informed Sobel about the contest.

Each month, this Bellarmine junior will do something different for his page spread in YM. In January, he was pictured in front of a painting he created with quick facts about his talents and interests. In February, the magazine asked him to write a love letter in honor of Valentine's Day.

He says that being featured in the magazine "is a little weird," and that everyone at his all-boys school knows about the contest. He even overhears people he doesn't know talking about it in the school hallways.

"When one of my friends told me he saw my picture in YM, I said the real question is 'why are you reading a girls' magazine?'" Sobel says, smiling. "And one of my teachers now calls me Mr. Delicious."

And the Sobel chatter has spread far beyond his high school corridors. He has received phone calls from girls in Massachusetts and New Jersey who saw his YM picture and searched for his phone number.

"One girl said she didn't expect me to be so nice," Sobel says. "She said, 'You like movies, and I work in a video store!'"

Bellarmine teacher Tom Alessandri says he found out about Sobel's "honor" from his 15-year-old daughter, who receives the magazine. He says when word spread to Sobel's classmates about the magazine contest, he knew it wouldn't be long until the jokes began.

"Mother of god, is he going to get a carload of razzing from his fellow students," Alessandri says, referring to his first reaction to hearing the news. "In a school of all guys, being singled out in a magazine primarily for girls is a recipe for comic disaster.

Yet Alessandri says that the contest doesn't do Sobel justice.

"This extraordinary young man is so much more than a 'pinup boy,'" he says.

Sobel's longtime friend Tucker Bryan says he thought it was fun to see his friend in the magazine and says that Sobel isn't the type of guy who normally would be found in a glossy girls' publication like YM.

Although December is a long way off, Sobel already knows what he will do with the $10,000 scholarship if he wins it. Fellow contestant Rashad Leeper mentioned in his January bio how proud his mother would be for Leeper to win the money to attend college, and Sobel has already decided that his winnings would be given to Leeper.

"I'm fortunate that my parents can help me with college, so it would be nice to give the money to someone who could maybe use it more," he says.

For more information about Matt Sobel and the Last Boy Standing contest, visit http://www.ym.com/lastboy.