A 25-year-old man who officials say posed as a 17-year-old so he could once again take to the basketball court as a high school athlete attended Dallas high schools for nearly nine months before his arrest last week. Sidney Bouvier Gilstrap-Portley began the school year at Skyline High School, where he enrolled claiming to be a Hurricane Harvey refugee. Months later, he moved to Hillcrest High School and joined the basketball team, Dallas ISD officials said. As a student there, Gilstrap-Portley dated a 14-year-old classmate, the girl’s mother said.

Sidney Gilstrap-Portley

(Dallas County Jail) Sidney Gilstrap-Portley (Dallas County Jail) Gilstrap-Portley, who was arrested Friday night, faces a charge of tampering with government records. He was booked into the Dallas County Jail last week and has since bonded out, according to court records. He has no previous criminal history. Gilstrap-Portley enrolled at Skyline as Rashun Richardson at a time when the district had opened its doors to hurricane evacuees, said Dallas ISD spokeswoman Robyn Harris. "He took that as an opportunity to gain access to our schools," she said. "He was fairly savvy to be able to utilize that type of position, knowing that we were accepting Harvey students." In October, Gilstrap-Portley enrolled at Hillcrest High as a freshman, Harris said. She said that Dallas ISD officials believe his primary motivation was to play basketball, though he told them he was homeless and had come to Dallas unaccompanied because of Hurricane Harvey. Gilstrap-Portley, who appears to have had a collegiate basketball career at Dallas Christian College, was a star for Hillcrest's team for the 2017-18 season. High school coaches voted him the District 11-5A offensive player of the year. The Hillcrest Panthers finished the season with an 11-10 record. Dallas ISD officials said Gilstrap-Portley's charade came to an end after one of his former coaches from North Mesquite High School saw him playing at a tournament in April and recognized him as one of his players who graduated from high school seven years ago. The Mesquite coach alerted the Hillcrest basketball coach that "one of my former players who graduated a time ago is playing for you," according to Harris.

Phillip Randall, a basketball coach at North Mesquite High School, said he wasn't the coach who saw Gilstrap-Portley at the tournament, but that he did coach him until he graduated in 2011. "He was a good kid," Randall said. "I never had any problems 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." High school girlfriend The mother of a Hillcrest High freshman said that her daughter started dating Gilstrap-Portley in January. The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said her 14-year-old knew the man as Rashun Richardson and thought he was 17. "It’s unbelievable to me that he could get away with this," she said. "I don’t know what, how [the school] let this slip through the cracks."