HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The stocky man showed up in a basketball uniform for a game at Century High School in North Dakota. Players and coaches assumed he was a fan who had come with another team, so nobody objected when he began to pitch in around the bench.
“He helped lay out uniforms, got water. He even gave a couple of kids shoulder massages. Creepy stuff like that,” said Jim Haussler, activities director for the Bismarck Public School District.
After the game was over, the man joined the winning team on the court and asked if he could get a piggyback ride. One bemused player gave it to him.
“He makes himself appear as if he’s limited or handicapped. I think he plays an empathy card, so to speak,” Haussler said. “We didn’t realize what we were dealing with until several days later.”
What they were dealing with on the night of Feb. 4 was the Piggyback Bandit — Sherwin Shayegan of Bothell, Wash., a 28-year-old man who ingratiates himself with high school sports teams, then hoists his 5-foot-8, 240-pound frame onto the backs of the student athletes.
Shayegan’s antics stretch back to 2008 and had been mainly confined to Washington and Oregon. But since last fall, he has worked his way east to Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota, leaving a trail of befuddled athletes in his wake.
Shayegan has asked for piggybacks, attempted to pay for piggybacks and just sprung one upon an unsuspecting kid. He favors basketball games, but he also has leapt onto hockey, soccer and football players.
He has pretended to interview athletes for a term paper, acted as a team manager or just tried to blend in with the crowd for a piggyback payoff.
Why he does it is unclear, as is who came up with the “Piggyback Bandit” nickname that now follows him wherever he goes. Shayegan, contacted on his cellphone Tuesday, politely declined to speak of the piggyback rides until he could talk to an attorney.
“I’d prefer not to comment, if that’s OK,” he said.
Shayegan has a lengthy criminal rapsheet in Washington as well as nine outstanding warrants in one town in that state. Because of his piggyback antics, he has been banned from high school sporting events in Washington, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota.
“What’s disturbing to me is that he is jumping on our young athletes, he is 240 pounds, and he can hurt someone,” said Mark Beckman, executive director of the Montana High School Sports Association.
In October, Shayegan was arrested in Helena, Mont., for jumping on two unsuspecting high school soccer players during a state tournament.
Shayegan said something to a motel clerk in Helena that day that prompted the clerk to call police. A plainclothes officer went to the tournament and watched Shayegan jump on the back of a player.
Shayegan pleaded guilty on Feb. 1 to two misdemeanor assault charges. He was fined $730, given a 360-day suspended prison sentence and told not to go to any more Montana high school events.
“Go back to Seattle and behave,” Judge Bob Wood told him.
Shayegan didn’t listen. Just three days later, he struck again at the Bismarck basketball game. He also received a piggyback ride from a hockey player after a hockey game that same day.
That one-day spree led to Shayegan being banned from sporting events by North Dakota High School Activities Association executive secretary Sherman Sylling.
Later that week, Shayegan turned up at three basketball games in Minnesota, including the only college game where his appearance has been noted, St. Olaf versus Concordia. At that Feb. 8 game, Shayegan sat near the St. Olaf bench. Like the Bismarck game, it was assumed he had come with the other team.
“I think at one point he was giving water to individuals,” said Mike Ludwig, St. Olaf ’s sports information director.
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