Prep Steroid Tests Extend to Softball, Flag Football, By: Joe Smith

July 10, 2007

To comply with gender equity, the new high school steroid testing program passed by the state legislature in May will now also include softball and flag football, FHSAA commissioner John Stewart told the Times on Monday.

Stewart said the decision was made after a meeting Friday with Rep. Marcelo Llorente, a Miami Republican who pushed steriod testing for four years and spearheaded the recently signed House Bill 461.

The bill called for random testing of up to one percent of all athletes in three sports: football, baseball and weightlifting. According to data collected by the Florida High School Athletic Association, 94 percent of athletes who participated in those sports during the 2005-06 school year were boys. A 2005 survey conducted by the Center for Disease control estimated that 2.8 percent of high school girls in the state had tried illegal steroid pills or injections at least once in their lives.

That made some administrators and coaches, along with legal experts, wonder why the high school steroid- testing program targeted only athletes in predominantly male sports.

Stewart said the female sports to be tested - softball and flag football — were chosen because they were the counterparts to the male sports already written in the bill.

"For gender equity, you have to test both boys and girls," Stewart said. "That's what we're going to do."

Stewart also said the testing agency the state plans to use is The National Center for Drug Free Sport, which is the official administrator for drug testing in the NCAA.

Stewart said he will meet Monday with some officials from the Missouri-based agency to further discuss how the steroid testing policy will be implemented. But Stewart said he envisions a system where a computer will randomly select the 1 percent to be tested, and then an agent will go to the school to collect the sample before bringing it back to the lab.