Coach Who Posed as a High School Player in Virginia Causes Season’s Forfeit

In Dallas, a 25-year-old man posed as a 17-year-old student and played in a high school basketball team, becoming a star player before he was arrested in 2018 and charged with tampering with government records, The Dallas Morning News reported. He was sentenced to six years probation in 2019, the newspaper reported.

And in Memphis, in 2013, a 22-year-old man was accused of faking transcripts in order to join a high school basketball team, according to Fox 2, a local television station.

Brenda Hilton, the founder of Officially Human, an organization that promotes the respectful treatment of referees across the country, said the details of what occurred in Portsmouth were dispiriting.

“A coach’s role is to be an incredible role model for these players,” said Ms. Hilton, who is also the senior director of officiating at the Big Ten Conference, one of the nation’s college sports leagues.

She said she was “amazed” that an adult in such a role would have no shame in acting dishonestly.

“Here’s the bigger lesson: You are now telling the rest of this team that it was OK to cheat,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Honesty can never get you in trouble.”

The coach’s actions also raised questions of whether other adults in the gymnasium could or should have done more to prevent it, Ms. Hilton said.

“These kids now have a season robbed from them,” she said. “Their parents have had a season robbed from them.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/us/girls-basketball-virginia-coach.html