No plans to test for steroids by IHSAA, By: Phillip B. Wilson
July 18, 2007
As number of states that test high school athletes grows, there is no program in Indiana
First came New Jersey. Now it's Florida and Texas. Illinois plans to be the next state to initiate random steroid testing in high schools in 2008, attempting to short-circuit what some surveys suggest may become a nationwide epidemic among young athletes.
Don't expect Indiana to follow suit.
Indiana High School Athletic Association commissioner Blake Ress said the state can't afford testing -- at an estimated cost of $175 per test -- in a $4 million budget. Plus, Ress, educators and coaches question if there's enough steroid abuse in Indiana to justify the expense.
"It sounds good in public," Ress said, "but in reality, it's not very practical."
"I would say the (number of) athletes that have used any performance-enhancing drugs in this state is less than 1 percent. Is that worth testing everybody? I don't think so," said retired Ben Davis High School football coach Dick Dullaghan, who coached the Giants for two decades in a 38-year career.
He said his athletes were monitored so closely there were not "more than two or three kids in our program that we suspected may have done something."
Other states have decided to proceed with testing. New Jersey just completed its first year of statewide testing, without recording a single positive test. Florida and Texas approved programs for next year.
"There needed to be some deterrent," said Bob Baly, assistant director of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. "If the tests came down in cost, I would see a lot of states doing this."
Impetus for change
If Don Hooton has his wish, every state would test. Four years ago, Hooton didn't realize he had a steroid problem in his Plano, Texas, home. His youngest of three children, Taylor, used them for baseball.
It wasn't until a sixth trip to a psychologist that Taylor confessed. He quit using them, became depressed, and one month after his 17th birthday hanged himself in his bedroom. Hooton's wife, Gwen, found their son. She hasn't taken that walk upstairs since.
"It still feels like a horror story," said Don Hooton, 57. "My challenge to whomever is how do you know you don't have a problem? As long as you don't admit there's a problem, you don't have to do anything about it."
Five of the 15 players on his son's team were using steroids. Four others were suspected.
The Taylor Hooton Foundation was created to raise awareness around Dallas, but the message was spread nationally. Hooton has become so involved, he left a lucrative job at Hewlett-Packard. The foundation helped push Texas politicians to approve a bill for a $3 million testing program that this fall will become the largest in the country.
Major League Baseball recently donated $1 million to Hooton's foundation. Hooton has lined up celebrity help from NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Dick Butkus, who backed the Texas bill.
"It's a priority issue," Hooton said. "It's not a real question of money. It's a question of where you want to put your bucks."
Money matters
If a program consistent with other states were to be implemented in Indiana, it would cost approximately $280,000 to test 1 percent of the athletes. Ress said not even a quarter of that money is currently available.
Still, at least one Indiana politician supports testing.
"If the disqualification is strong enough, random testing will scare off a lot of kids," said U.S. Rep. Mark Souder (R-Fort Wayne), who served as chairman of the House Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Services from 2001-07 and has also been outspoken in the political push started by President Bush to clean up Major League Baseball. "Indiana would be better off with some sort of program."
National surveys estimate steroid use among high school athletes at between 4 percent and 6 percent. A 2006 survey from the University of Michigan indicated 2.7 percent of high school seniors have used steroids at some point, 1.8 percent in the past year.
It has been more than a decade since a Methodist Sports Medicine Clinic doctor conducted an anonymous survey in which he found 1.2 percent of 2,000 Indiana junior high school athletes had tried steroids or similar drugs.
Jerry Diehl, recently retired as assistant director of the locally based National Federation of State High School Associations, said ignorance about steroids exacerbates the problem. He recalled how in the late 1970s impressionable and ambitious high school athletes were told steroids would not produce bigger and better bodies.
"We lied to them," Diehl said. "But the kids started using steroids and they found out that they do work. Of course, then those kids die younger."
Studies have linked steroids to long-term health risks such as liver cancer and heart failure.
While political support has been critical to launching testing programs elsewhere, in Illinois, executive director Marty Hickman said a ticket surcharge will cover a $250,000 program in lieu of state funding.
"We'll probably start out fairly slow," Hickman said of testing athletes in football, track and field and wrestling. "Even if the tests don't turn up answers, that's going to be OK. The message that we are going to test is going to be powerfully effective. Catching them isn't the goal. Having kids not use anabolic steroids is the goal."
Illinois has about 300,000 athletes and a $6.5 million budget. Hickman is adamant his state is doing the right thing.
"I like the position we're in philosophically, that we would take this proactive approach rather than say it's too expensive or it's not a problem," he said. "The research shows steroids are out there."
