District Should Adopt Steroid Testing Policy, Push For More

The School Board of Highlands County will vote this week on developing a policy for testing student athletes for anabolic steroids. We endorse this policy but want to see it include all sports and student athletes.

The board is following the directions of the Florida High School Athletic Association's mandate from the state to implement this policy. It would require the testing of a percentage of student athletes in grades nine through 12. Only about 1 percent of athletes - boys and girls - participating in football, baseball, softball and weightlifting would be tested.

Terry Quarles, athletic director for Sebring High School, supports the policy, but wonders why sports such as wrestling are not included. We agree, and what about golf, tennis, volleyball and any other sanctioned sport? Steroid abuse isn't limited to just three or four sports.

Considering the national uproar steroid and human growth hormone use is causing at the professional levels, it shouldn't stop there. In fact, preventing this kind of abuse at the school-age child level should be an even higher priority.

All of us agree that the integrity of the game is of critical importance, but ruining people's health is the real issue here. Medical experts agree that steroid use is most damaging to young, growing bodies. It also wrecks the bodies of full-grown adults.

Today's youth sports are different than in our day. The training is more intense. The competition is fiercer. Parents push harder for their sons and daughters to excel, and in turn, the temptation of looking for an edge is greater. A father in the Tampa area recently was busted for supplying his young son with steroids to improve his in-line skating ability.

It's a different world, and we appreciate the strides that young athletes make to play better and be stronger. But we don't want these athletic feats to be achieved through artificial means. More importantly, we don't want their health wrecked because their parents thought Little Johnny might get a scholarship if he were just a little stronger.

We encourage the district to implement this policy, and to push hard for broader testing on all sports. It's in the best interest of our children.