Two years after a 22-year-old man was found to be playing high school basketball in Odessa, Texas, another extreme case of searching for high school glory has bubbled up in Memphis. This time another 22-year-old man — reportedly married — was found trying to pose as a teen to get in some burn with the high school hoops team. And again, it’s bizarre.
According to local reports by the Commercial Appeal and TV stations, McKinzie Sewell had received a GED from Shreveport, Lousiana, before enrolling at Tennessee state-title contender Ridgeway under a false transcript. A woman reported to be his wife signed that she was his guardian, and just like that, Ridgeway had a 6-6 player who rarely played off its bench. We know that because even Sewell’s few minutes of garbage time left the team ineligible for the rest of the playoffs — this after his team reached the regional final, one step from the state tournament, after enduring the death of a Ridgeway assistant coach who was shot in his home.
In a letter to Ridgeway principal Jim Long, the student-athlete in question was identified as a transfer student from Louisiana but was not identified by name. After getting into disciplinary trouble at school, the student was found to be living in the Ridgeway district with a woman who was either his live-in girlfriend or wife and not his mother as originally thought, according to the letter.
The TSSAA also determined that the student had received a General Equivalency Diploma from the Shreveport Job Corps and had also falsified a transcript from Peabody Magnet High School in Louisiana.
As part of the investigation, Roadrunners coach Wes Henning told the TSSAA that the player in question played in the closing minute of Tuesday’s 90-71 victory over Whitehaven in the Region semifinals.
Finding the motivation for these stunts always leads a search down a murky path. Was is for the lure of being Big Man on Campus? You’d think a person who never graduated from high school would see coursework as a general drag just to reach that end. He’d be better served going to the YMCA once school got out, conceivably. Was it to be admired by the student body? Well, he did have a live-in girlfriend/wife, so that would seem odd. It’s all very, very strange.
H/t Prep Rally
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