UIL Takes Stand Against Steroids With Video

August 17, 2007

Thousands of Central Texas families send their children into organized school sports each year.

For them, feelings of pride mingle with worry about injury.

These days, though, there is also the worry about steroids.

With less than two weeks away from the opening of the 2007 high school football season, state regulators are doing everything in their power to keep student athletes from cheating.

They're no longer just wagging fingers but using what appears to work with 21st century young people: video.

"Young people tend to look at videos, and they look at the sounds and images," said Charles Breithaupt, athletic director of the University Interscholastic League. "Better than they would read some manual about steroid education."

"If we think a player, a student athlete in high school has been around or would consider or is using steroids, we will not recruit them on our football team," said University of Texas football coach Mack Brown.

Produced by UT sports nutrition expert Dr. Ed Coyle, the UIL video pulls no punches with a narrator that says, "Users suffer from a whole host of negative side effects. In men, they range from heavy acne on the back to enlarged breasts. Women often end up with masculine characteristics, including a deepened voice, male pattern baldness and even facial hair."

The video reaches out, not just to athletes, but to their parents.

"It gives the parent an opportunity to understand what's going on, because there's more than just steroids in this story," Breithaupt said. "There are nutritional supplements that could cause students to test positive."

If the UIL effort does the trick, not only will students who play avoid embarrassment, damage to their bodies or worse, they will also become the grown-ups who complete the wheel in the next generation.

The goal is for them to be among those who help return sports to the playing of games that lift spirits, teach values and make real champions.