Steroids A Growing Concern In Florida, By: Alden Gonzalez
April 10, 2007
They have spoiled baseball fields, raised question marks on home run records, made Olympic gold medals fraudulent, tarnished good seasons and ruined our most beloved sports.
They have fired managers.
Banned players.
Put people in prison.
Taken lives.
Recently, they have made their way down to the pep rallies, booster clubs and school cafeterias, seeping through the hallway doors and into the lives of teenagers.
Steroids have been a part of sports since they were used by Olympic weightlifters in the mid-20th century, but not until this generation have they become so popular among athletes.
Now the temptation to use steroids has trickled down to the high school level, and a steroid raid in early March is only the latest in what many say is a growing trend.
"It's a huge issue in high school sports and it's something we take very seriously," said Samuel A. Hester, associate commissioner for compliance and eligibility for the Florida High School Athletic Association. "With all the instances that have come up nationally, though, nothing surprises me anymore."
Steroids, human growth hormone and syringes were seized on March 2 from the Palm Beach Rejuvenation Center in Jupiter, Fla., where Joseph L. Raich, a well-known figure in the high school wrestling community of south Florida, is a director.
Raich, who sponsored the 2004 United States Olympic freestyle wrestling team, had steroids and HGH taken from his desk, bringing suspicion to the Jupiter Christian School wrestling team.
Last year, the Eagles became the smallest school in Florida to win a state team championship in wrestling, and three team members - including two individual state champions - came from the Raich family.
Then on March 15, steroids and syringes were found in the desk of Chris Ruh, son of Jupiter Christian wrestling coach Robin Ruh, during another search of the center.
The incident has put Florida high school wrestling on watch, and not just in south Florida. Speculation is that steroid use in high school is prominent nationally.
"There are some kids that use them," Columbia High School wrestling coach Al Nelson said. "You notice it when an individual jumps three weight classes in one year.
"Most of it is unnatural muscle."
According to a survey by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, steroid use among high school students more than doubled between 1991 and 2003. At the time, less than 4 percent of the nation's high schools were testing for steroids.
Currently, only six states have passed laws against steroid use in high schools. Florida is not one of them.
Hester said the FHSAA has been pushing for steroid regulations for about two years, but nobody wants to fund them because each test can cost anywhere between $110 and $500.
"There's surveys saying that 5 percent of high school athletes use steroids, and if you look at the fact that there are about 210,000 high school athletes in the state of Florida, that's a lot of people," he said. "We know it's a big problem, and we've been trying to control it for years now, but we don't get much help."
In Sept. 2006, New Jersey became the first state to test high school athletes when it acted on a bill passed in Dec. 2005 that adopted random steroid tests for high school athletes whose teams qualify for postseason play.
"I don't see why we don't have (steroid testing in Florida)," Gainesville High School wrestling coach Ryland Wagner said. "It's an unfair advantage for a steroid user to go up against a clean guy."
Hester said it would cost $1,000,500 to test 2 percent of high school athletes in Florida, a bill the Florida legislature does not want to fund. And with the average high school coach making 37 cents a day, the FHSAA doesn't have many other places to turn for funding.
"I'm going to make about $900 this season because this is only a part-time thing for me, and I'm not the only one," Wagner said. "It's an important issue, and I wish others would take it upon themselves to get it done."
Even if Florida does decide to implement steroid testing, the pressure for high school students to use them will still be high.
In June, 2005, Sports Weekly conducted a roundtable discussion with athletes from schools in the Washington area, bringing to light some scary revelations.
Students said the use of performance-enhancing substances takes place openly in the locker rooms, weight rooms and cafeterias of public and private high schools. In addition, coaches and athletes know what's going on but are often powerless to stop it.
Perhaps most shocking is that athletes acknowledge a degree of risk in using steroids but are willing to sacrifice long-term health for short-term benefits.
"You do want to get big and you want to get an edge, but at what cost?" GHS wrestler Mathew Terza said. "It's especially hard for kids who feel their sport is going to be their ticket to college.
"If that means taking steroids, then there is that pressure to do it."
