Man arrested after posing as seventeen year old to play high school basketball

Sidney Bouvier Gilstrap-Portley claimed to be a Hurricane Harvey refugee to play high-school basketball. Photo / Getty Images

A 25-year-old man lived a double life as a teenager for nine months - just so he could play high-school basketball again.

Sidney Bouvier Gilstrap-Portley posed as a 17-year-old Hurricane Harvey refugee in August when he enrolled as a freshman under the name Rashun Richardson at Skyline High School in Dallas.

He later transferred to Hillcrest High School, where he joined the basketball team and was named the district's offensive player of the year.

Fully immersing himself in the high-school scene, Gilstrap-Portley went as far as to date a 14-year-old classmate.

But the keen baller's sneaky scheme was unravelled when one of his former coaches spotted him playing in an April tournament just a few months after Gilstrap-Portley graduated from North Mesquite High School.

"He was a good kid," North Mesquite's coach, Phillip Randall, told the Dallas Morning News.

"I never had any problem out of him. That's why I was shocked when I heard that all this came out because that's not the kid that I knew."

Dallas Independent School District spokeswoman Robyn Harris said they believed Gilstrap-Portley's "primary motivation" to get enrolled as a Hurricane Harvey refugee, was basketball.

"He took that as an opportunity to gain access to our schools," she said.

"He was fairly savvy to be able to utilise that type of position, knowing that we were accepting Harvey students."

Gilstrap-Portley was arrested on Friday on a charge of tampering with government records.

Dallas superintendent Dr. Michael Hinojosa told NBC DFW the district would "follow better protocols to try and prevent this from happening again."