School Steroids Crackdown - Part II, By: Liz Chun
Are steroids finding their way into high school sports? The National Collegiate Athletic Association is already stepping up drug tests of college athletes. Now high schools are being asked to join in the fight too.
Lawmakers are teaming up with athletic programs to push mandatory drug testing on teens nationwide. There are a dozen anti-doping policies that are very close to final approval. In two weeks, New Jersey may become the first state to test high school athletes for about 80 banned substances including steroids. And Hawaii may be next.
Jeff McKeown has been a coach for the Castle girls basketball team for 10 years. And while the game is the same, there's are a different set of pressures off the court.
"They're getting it from all ends," he said. "They know the college scholarships are out there. They have their parents. They have their community. They have the next person. They have people in the hallway potentially saying, 'Hey, this will make you better.'"
It's an invitation to try something that gives quick results, like steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.
"I don't know about anyone taking it, I just know they want to try it," said Castle Knights basketball player Shanyn Fafard-Kaaihue. "They just want to get thick and buff up already."
Fafard-Kaaihue says whatever her peers are choosing, it's not always the right choice.
"I can tell when people take it because they were scrawny and then next thing you know they come back to school and they're huge," she said. "It's like, 'Oh, they're on something.'"
Shanyn's teammates agree with her.
"Yeah, it is a high school problem," said teammate Tracie Kam. "I think high school kids are getting more involved with steroids."
Kam sees classmates taking all kinds of things to become bigger, stronger and faster.
"A lot of guys, they drink power shakes, they drink energy drinks, they take pills," she said.
Keith Amemiya is the executive director of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association. He's in charge of all state championships.
"The use of steroids hasn't been a huge issue to come across my desk, but I would be naive to say it doesn't exist in Hawaii," he said.
Amemiya says there are no formal policies for drug testing in prep sports in the islands. And even if there were, it costs too much.
"I have been told by other states that the general cost per athlete per test is well over $100 and we have 33,000 high school student athletes in the state," he said. "To test every single one of them would be a staggering cost."
Let's do the math: 33,000 tests at $100 a piece adds up to $3.3 million. But that's not the end of the problem for the HHSAA - $3.3 million is nearly three times it's annual budget.
So it's up to high school athletes in Hawaii to take things into their own hands. For now, playing it safe is their responsibility.
"The biggest fear in our younger athletes are the permanent effects on their young development," said Dr. Jay Marumoto, who specializes in orthopedic surgery and sports medicine. "They can actually cause the premature closure of their growth plates, so they'll end up with either a shorter stature or shorter limbs than they normally would."
Extreme steroid abuse can even lead to heart attacks, liver damage and death.
"Sooner or later, everything you do to your body is going to catch up with you," Kam said.
If the state of New Jersey takes the lead in drug testing, it will set a tough standard to follow.
The preliminary plan has high school athletes losing an entire year if they test positive. They can also be ruled ineligible just for refusing to take the test.
