Arenas Will Stay at Grant

Gilbert Arenas, perhaps the region’s top basketball recruit, will remain at Grant High for his senior year, his father said Wednesday, ending months of speculation that he would transfer to Sylmar.

“I felt more comfortable with him staying at Grant,” Gil Arenas Sr. said.

Arenas Sr. said he told Sylmar Principal Linda Calvo on Monday that his son was “going to pass” on the transfer.

Transfer rumors began shortly after last season, when Arenas complained about Grant’s low-profile off-season competition, and escalated in the summer after Arenas played for Sylmar in a tournament and was accepted into Sylmar’s math and science magnet program.

While Arenas Sr. said his son would rather play for Sylmar, the defending City Section 3-A Division champion, the decision to stay at Grant was based on academic concerns.

Arenas Sr. feared that a magnet curriculum might lack some core classes required to qualify for a Division I college.

“The last thing I want to hear is that Gil can’t go to [college] because he didn’t complete all of his core classes,” Arenas Sr. said.

Arenas, after recently passing geometry and Spanish in summer school at Reseda, has scored 940 on the SAT, his father said.

Arenas, a 6-foot-3 All-City selection, averaged 29.8 points and 5.7 assists last season.