Steroid Use in High School Athletics

In these days of Congressional hearings and publicized reports on steroid use in professional athletics, it is very easy to forget that the people affected by pro athletes use of these steroids are high school athletes. The pressure to win in athletics is enormous and because of that pressure many athletes feel like they have to turn to banned substances to gain a competitive edge. What they do not realize is that using these substances can and will lead to death. Sports Weekly conducted a study of high school athletes in the Washington area and, based on the answers given by the students, they came up with these conclusions:

1.) Athletes use performance enhancing drugs freely in the locker rooms, weight rooms, and cafeterias of both public and private high schools.

2.) Both coaches and athletes know what is going on, but are often unable to stop the use of steroids by their athletes. Some coaches even turn a blind eye to the issue.

3.) As I said before, the pressure to win is huge and it is even bigger for athletes who have hopes of gaining scholarships to colleges to play sports.

4.) Many high school athletes recognize the risk of using performance enhancing drugs and believe using them is "cheating", but others are willing to risk their long term health for short term gain.

According to a study done by the Center for Disease Control, steroid use in high school athletes has more than doubled from 1993 to 2003. That same study showed that 6% of the 15,000 students surveyed admitted to at least trying pills or injections of steroids. But at the same time it has been found that only 4% of high schools conducted test for steroids. How can this be? Why, if the problem is so big, is nothing being done to fix it? The one word answer to both of those questions is, simply, money. Steroids testing costs lots and lots of money. Florida's Polk County began testing for steroids in January of 2005 and they perform 3 to 5 random steroids tests on students per athletic season. ow much did each test cost? $105 compared to $18 for recreational drug tests. It was not specified in the article whether the athletic seasons were fall, winter, and spring or each individual sport athletic seasons but I am going to assume that it meant every individual season. So how much would it cost for Papio South to conduct steroids testing each year? You would have to figure in all the sports teams we sponsor. For fall there is football, volleyball, girl's golf, boy's tennis, softball and boy's and girl's cross country. Winter there is boy's and girl's swimming, boy's and girl's basketball and wrestling. Spring is girl's tennis, boy's golf, boy's and girl's track and baseball. these are just the sports I could think of off the top of my head and I am sure that there are more. You have to figure that at $105 5 athletes per sport and the amount of money per school is going to be around $10,000 per school! Take that times approximately 194 schools in Nebraska and that equals $1,940,000 for steroid testing for Nebraska. Take that times 50 to get a rough estimate of $97,000,000 for every high school in the United States(gotta have some math involved with the blog) . With the amount of national debt that has been accumulated that might seem like a paltry sum, but that is a lot of money for the government to give to high schools and most of it will be tax money anyways so it would be a lot easier and cost a lot less money if students, parents, teachers, athletes and coaches took measures to stop steroid use before it gets started.
Well how do we do that you ask? The government itself has taken steps in the right direction by holding the Congressional hearings, but it should not be up to government to stop the use of steroids. Coaches and parents can sit down their students and athletes and outline for them clear cut rules and punishments for using performance enhancing drugs. If they know what could happen to them if they get caught then they'll be less likely to engage in that activity in the first place. Another way is for the athletes themselves to hold each other accountable. Yeah, I know, nobody likes a tattle tale but if you see a fellow athlete using steroids would you rather drop off an anonymous tip to a coach or watch that athlete and friend turn into someone you don't even recognize? I hope the answer is no.
The bottom line is this: Steroid use by high school athletes has gotten out of control and we as the athletes, students, teachers, and coaches need to do something about it. We can't always rely on the government to solve our problems for us and this problem is one that affects probably every high school across the nation and we can help to fix it and we NEED to help to fix it because without us, the steps taken by government will mean nothing.

-yoda

* The article I mentioned is one done by USA Today and is the source for much of this blog including the cost of steroids testing in Polk County and the four numbered points in the first section of the blog. The URL you can find it on is:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/preps/2005-06-08-sports-weekly-steroids-report_x.htm