When 29 is the new 17
Grade 11 basketball-playing ‘teen’ faces expulsion from Canada for misrepresenting his age
Cam Nekkers, the coach of a high school basketball team in Pickering, was suspicious the instant he saw the towering teenager preparing to play for the opposition: “I knew it when I looked right at him. I said, ‘that guy’s 30 years old.’ ” He was wrong. He’s actually 29. Trouble is, Jonathan Nicola, a 6-foot-9 Grade 11 student at Catholic Central High School in Windsor, has been posing as a 17-year-old at the school since he arrived in Canada from South Sudan last fall, according to officials.
And now the “teenage” basketball player faces being bounced from Canada following his arrest by Canada Border Services Agency officers this month.
The CBSA alleges Nicola “misrepresented material facts on his application” to study in Canada, and that he contravened the Immigration Refugee Protection Act.
Nicola was on the Catholic Central Comets roster for the provincial championship tournament last month, where his team lost to Nekkers and his team from Pine Ridge Secondary School.
“If you saw his face, he wasn’t 17,” Nekkers said. “After the game, he’s sitting on the bench as a bunch of us walk by; we get past him, and I’m like, ‘Did you look at his face? Does anybody think he’s 17 years old?’ ”
Nicola arrived at Pearson International Airport on Nov. 23, and was issued a student visa to study in Windsor through January 2017, according to Canadian officials. (He has told the Windsor Star he is from Juba, in South Sudan.)
His passport — and his application for a student visa — indicated he was born on Nov. 25, 1998, said Anna Pape, spokeswoman for the Immigration and Refugee Board, which handles Nicola’s detention reviews and admissibility hearing.
“Mr. Nicola’s date of birth was determined to be Nov. 1, 1986, following his application for a United States visitor visa,” said Pape, explaining why Nicola has been deemed “inadmissible” to Canada on grounds of misrepresentation.
According to the CBSA, an alert was raised when Nicola recently applied to visit the United States, when a fingerprint match determined he was the same person who had previ- ously applied to visit the U.S. with a different birthday.
His next detention review is Tuesday.
Stephen Fields, spokesman for the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board, would not say whether parents were alerted to the possibility a 29-year-old man had been taking classes with their children. He could not remember a similar situation.
“Not in my time here,” he said. “But if somebody presents at one of our schools with all the valid documentation, we have to trust they’ve gone through the necessary clearances that they would need in order to arrive on our doorstep.”
In Ontario, anyone born in 1995 or earlier is ineligible to play high school sports.
“He was a bit slow, a bit sluggish,” said Gus Gymnopoulos, whose team from Vaughan Secondary School also beat Catholic Central in the provincial tournament. “But once he got the ball down in the painted area, he was very hard to guard.”
In January, Catholic Central coach Peter Cusumano told the Windsor Star that Nicola had no meaningful experience in organized basketball, but that he believed “this kid will have a chance at the NBA.”