There's nothing like reliving the glory days of high school basketball ... until the cops show up. Sidney Bouvier Gilstrap-Portley, a 25-year-old man who graduated from North Mesquite High School in Texas, was recently arrested and booked into Dallas County Jail after police realized he had enrolled at Hillcrest High School, located in North Dallas, as a 17-year-old freshman.
Gilstrap-Portley has since bonded out, according to The Dallas Morning News, but not before scheming his way back onto the varsity court and sending shock waves through a pair of Dallas high schools that evidently missed the fact he was a full-grown man. As reported by Dana Branham, Claire Ballor and Julieta Chiquillo, the 25-year-old began the 2017-18 school year at Skyline High School "claiming to be a Hurricane Harvey refugee" named Rashun Richardson, then transferred to Hillcrest in October to join the basketball team.
Dallas Independent School District superintendent Robyn Harris told the News "that Dallas ISD officials believe his primary motivation was to play basketball, though he (also) told them he was homeless."
The faux high school star faces a charge of tampering with government records, per the News. And the mother of a 14-year-old classmate of Gilstrap-Portley says the 25-year-old also dated her daughter while pretending to be a Hillcrest student.
Gilstrap-Portley, who apparently had a moderately successful stint as a guard for Dallas Christian College's basketball team from 2013-2014, got his wish when he landed a starting role on Hillcrest's team. By the end of his first season, he was on scouting websites' radars as a freshman prospect and had been named District 11-5A offensive player of the year.
It wasn't until one of his former coaches, from North Mesquite, spotted him at a tournament in April, that his plan was foiled. There's no indication as to how long Gilstrap-Portley would have continued playing if he weren't caught, or whether he would've taken up a new name and come back to play even more high school ball after graduation.
