Published: October 21, 2007 02:39 am      

Keeping off the juice

Steroid use on the rise among high school athletes

FAIRMONT — It has almost become a daily routine.

Somewhere a professional athlete is accused of using steroids or some other performance-enchancing drug.

Track superstar Marion Jones admitted using steroids and returned her gold medals won while using. Major League Baseball home run king Barry Bonds continues to be bombarded with steroid accusations wherever he goes. And the list goes on.

Some of these athletes may not have been exposed to performance-enhancing drugs until they were on a professional level, but more and more athletes are starting to use on the high school level and younger.

According to The Associated Press, 3.4 percent of West Virginia high school athletes surveyed recently said they had used steroids. The national average was 1.8 percent.

What steps are being taken to curb this trend in West Virginia? Do area coaches and administrators think it is a problem here?

“I don’t think we’ve had a case of drug use by a student athlete that has been reported to my level,” Marion County Superintendent of Schools Dr. James Phares said. “But you’d be completely naive to think that there is no drug problem in Marion County.”

And Phares is right.

Earlier this year, the Three Rivers Drug Task Force arrested four men and charged them with distributing anabolic steroids in Marion County.

Fairmont Police Chief Stephen Cain told the Times West Virginian in May that the police had been receiving complaints about steroids being sold locally.

Some of those sold may have ended up in the hands of high school athletes looking for an edge on their competition — either on the field or for college scholarships.

Of the 50 states, only Texas, Florida and New Jersey have had some kind of high school steroid testing mandated by their state Legislatures.

A handful of other states have actual statutes and rules about using performance-enhancing drugs, but none of them mandates testing.

In West Virginia the matter is left up to the 55 individual counties.

“The legal staff said that steroid testing is generally something that counties deal with,” said Liza Cordeiro, communications director for the West Virginia Department of Education.

Cordeiro also said that the issue hasn’t been discussed recently with the West Virginia Board of Education.

All West Virginia schools are drug-free zones, according to state law and state school board policy, but there are no specific rules for steroids or performance-enchancing testing in place by the WVBOE.

“The board of education and I in late September discussed the issues of drug testing as far as employees and students are concerned,” Phares said. “We’ve been informally knocking it around, and I figure sometime in the next year we’ll take a look at it.”

The pressure on high school athletes to perform well continues, especially with college tuition costs on the rise.

Because of that, more and more families are depending on scholarships to fund higher education, making the temptation to use performance-enchancing drugs greater and greater.

That’s not to say that using steroids is the only way to go, but for those who do not know the risks of using such drugs it can seem like an easier and quicker alternative to old-fashioned hard work.

Phares mentioned a recent survey he’d seen on ESPN that 81 percent of teenagers surveyed would use steroids, even though they knew it could take 10 years off their life, if it helped them get a scholarship or a pro contract.

“That tells me we need to do something to address the educational issues,” he said. “I’m going to ask Frank Moore (Marion County’s facilities and athletics administrator) to gather some information and address issues about how to educate athletes better.”

East Fairmont head football coach Bill Haddox said he is not worried if the county decides to start testing student-athletes.

“I don’t worry about it because we don’t take that stuff, as far as I know,” he said.

Haddox said he makes sure his team knows about the dangers and repercussions of steroids and performance-enchancing drugs and that they are not the only way to go.

“I raised two boys that could both bench press over 300 pounds and neither of them needed to take steroids,” Haddox said. “We preach to the boys not to take it because they don’t need it. If you eat right, sleep right and work out right, that’s all you need to do.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that random drug testing for student athletes is constitutional, according to Phares.

Cordeiro backs that up.

“There are some cases from other states where courts (including the U.S. Supreme Court) have ruled that suspicionless drug testing is permissible for students involved in voluntary extracurricular activities (such as sports). I think that, in most cases, these decisions have been made at the district level.”

In 2003, 17-year old Taylor Hooton, of Texas, committed suicide after doctor’s believe he became depressed after stopping his steroid use.

Now Taylor’s father Don travels the country trying to urge states to institute testing among high school athletes and runs a Web site (www.taylorhooton.org) dedicated to helping get the message out about steroid use in high school athletes.

Hooton was quoted in a recent Associated Press story that he doesn’t believe that any program can be effective without a testing program to back it up.

While Marion County hasn’t had any cases come to light of a high school athlete using steroids, Phares and the BOE are taking a proactive approach to a touchy subject.

“My recommendation is studying it further and coming up with some type of plan to go any further,” Phares said. “That means surveying students, surveying parents, surveying administrators and coaches. We had some conversations about it, and within the next year we’ll address it with a planning and goal session.

“We do not have a policy in place, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be.”

E-mail Mike Bowen at mbowen@timeswv.com.