Everybody knows that high school sports can be deadly serious business that lead to all sorts of misbehavior. Anyone who had any doubt can just remember the Texas mother who committed murder over her daughter’s position on the cheer squad. But the idea of hiring a 22 year old who has already completed high school to pretend he’s 16 and go back to high school under an assumed name in order to gain a competative advantage sounds more like a movie plot than real life.
But that’s just what Cedric Smith and Louis Vives, coaches for the South Florida Elite AAU team, think is happening in Odessa, Texas. They’re convinced that supposedly 16 old Jerry Joseph is really 22 year old Guerdwich Montimere (see right in the photo), who was a basketball star at Fort Lauderdale’s Dillard High School and graduated in 2007.
Smith isn’t just suspicious of Joseph – he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that “I’m 100 percent sure. I would bet my paycheck” that Joseph is really Montimere.
Vivas told USA Today: “It was shocking, and the question at hand was just why. … When I approached him, I just wanted to know what was going on. The surprised look on his face gave it away that it was him … Once he saw a Florida team and players and coaches who knew him, the look on his face was like, ‘Wow, what am I into now?’ ”
Joseph plays for Permian High School, which also happens to be the setting of the television series “Friday Night Lights.” School officials are looking into the matter and claim to be taking the allegations seriously.
