FINISH LINE: Can’t get enough high school

Published 11:19 pm Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Arrested development

Most can’t wait to get out of high school, and many only return for class reunions.

That’s not the case with Guerdwich Montimere, a 22-year-old man who faked his way back into Permian High School in Odessa, Texas, and led it to the state basketball playoffs. Permian is the same school made famous in the football movie “Friday Night Lights.”

Montimere was released from jail Wednesday after posting $500 bond following his arrest on a charge of failure to identify himself to a police officer.

At the time, Montimere was posing as Jerry Joseph, a 6-foot-5, 16-year-old sophomore. He moved to Odessa in February 2009 and enrolled as a ninth-grader at a junior high, showing school officials a Haitian birth certificate and claiming he was living with with a half-brother in the dorm of a local university.

Suspicions about Joseph’s real identity first arose last month at an amateur basketball tournament in Arkansas. Three Florida coaches there recognized Joseph as Montimere, who graduated from Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale in 2007.

On April 27, Permian administrators received an anonymous e-mail about Montimere’s true identity. Officials rejected the allegation, and a judge granted Permian’s basketball coach legal guardianship that allowed Montimere to remain enrolled at the school.

Permian now probably will have to forfeit the 2009 basketball season in which it advanced to the playoffs. Meanwhile, Montimere faces up to six months in jail and a fine up to $2,500 and he has to give back the prep award he won: Newcomer of the Year.

PARTING SHOT

“Just a hamster chasing a peanut.”

— Bobby Wilson

The Angels catcher to the L.A. Times on what team doctors discovered while examining his head after a collision with a teammate.