Plano father champions steroid bill, By: Josh Hixson

May 31, 2007

A bill mandating random steroid testing for high school athletes came nearly four years too late for Don Hooton.

Hooton — a Plano father who believes his son Taylor Hooton committed suicide in July 2003 because of a steroid-induced depression — said Taylor’s death could have been prevented if random steroid testing had been in place when his son was a varsity baseball player at Plano West Senior High School.

“I think the odds are very high that it would have saved Taylor’s life,” Hooton said. “Out of the 15 boys on Taylor’s baseball team roughly half were doing steroids. The peer pressure was extraordinarily high.”

Senate Bill 8 gives the University Interscholastic League (UIL) $3 million a year to create a random steroid testing program next fall for Texas’ 730,000 high school athletes.

The State House of Representatives passed the bill 140-4 Monday. Gov. Rick Perry has until June 17 to sign it into law.

Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Perry, said the governor received the bill Wednesday, but declined to comment on his plans to sign it. Rep. Dan Flynn (R-Van), the House of Representatives sponsor for Senate Bill 8, said he believes Perry will look favorably at it.

“I visited with (Perry) on Monday, and he was very elated to see that it passed,” Flynn said. “He has expressed the same concerns that others have.”

Hooton has nicknamed the bill “Taylor’s Law” in honor of his son.

Hooton said he is planning to leave his job as a director of worldwide marketing for Hewlitt-Packard to begin a national campaign that will bring Taylor’s Law to legislatures in the other 49 states.

“It is clear that people don’t understand the extent of the problem,” Hooton said. “They are just like us before we lost Taylor. We didn’t think there was a problem either. Taylor’s Law is a way to get the public to recognize that this bill is about saving children’s lives.”

Flynn said Senate Bill 8 originated this session after the House General Investigating and Ethics Committee investigated steroid use among high school athletes in 2005.

“We found out that over 50,000 high school athletes were using steroids,” Flynn said, citing a Texas A&M University survey on drug use among high school students in the state of Texas.

“Everyone wants to deny or say (steroid use) doesn’t happen. There was a young boy in Plano that hung himself because of it,” Flynn said. “The bottom line is kids die from the use of these steroids because they are so readily available. That is what was really scaring us all.”

Rep. Ken Paxton (R-McKinney), who was also a member of the House General Investigating and Ethics Committee in 2005, said 50,000 students using steroids is a conservative estimate.

“Research suggests that those numbers are probably too low,” Paxton said. “I believe this bill is about the best we can do. We certainly can’t follow every kid around to find out when and if they use steroids. But we can test them. That will certainly be a deterrent for some of them.”

Flynn said the bill gives the UIL authority to determine the number of students and schools picked to undergo the test, as well as the penalties for a positive test.

About 30,000 high school athletes are projected to be tested in the program’s first year, Flynn said.

Cliff Odenwald, athletics director for the Plano Independent School District, speculated that one third of all 5A and 4A High Schools would be included in UIL steroid testing program.

“There is a feeling that more students use steroids in the larger schools,” Odenwald said. “Football and baseball are also target areas. There will probably be random sampling throughout all the sports, but more (athletes) will be picked from those two sports.”

UIL officials were unavailable for immediate comment Wednesday.

Odenwald said steroid abuse by Major League Baseball (MLB) and National Football League (NFL) players has influenced high school baseball and football players to do the same.

“When you read the sports pages and all the publications, there seems to be more (steroid) usage in those two sports with pro athletes,” Odenwald said. “All of our student athletes look to the pros as role models. When you hear that an athlete is using performance enhancing drugs, then you may think you need to go the same route.”

Hooton agreed with Odenwald, saying he believes there is a direct correlation between steroid use among famous professional athletes and high school athletes.

“A poor example has been set by our elite athletes. I believe it has contributed significantly to the problem. They know some of the short cuts professional athletes are taking to get their fame and fortune,” Hooton said.

The longer the NFL and MLB struggle to eliminate steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, the harder it will be for officials to get rid of these same drugs at the high school level, Hooton said.

“Steroid use is still a major problem in professional sports,” Hooton said. “There is no question that professional sports in general need to take steps to completely wipe this drug use out of sports.”