Criminal record doesn't cost Boyd, By: Ray Cox

Franklin County knows the coach was found guilty of dispensing anabolic steroids in 1991.

10/11/06

ROCKY MOUNT — School officials present and past as well as players and parents are standing by Franklin County High School football coach Ben Boyd in the wake of revelations from an anonymous tipster that the coach had been found guilty of 1991 federal misdemeanor charges of misbranding and illegally dispensing anabolic steroids.

Twice, Boyd has been confronted by county school officials after they received unsigned correspondence with details about his past. On each occasion, Boyd was forthcoming about his personal history. Both times, he was told he would keep his job after he offered assurances he has had nothing to do with steroids since being convicted.

Boyd went so far as to offer his immediate resignation last spring to then-principal Benny Gibson, the now-retired principal said. Boyd again made the same offer this week.

“I told them I’d resign rather than put a tarnish on this school and this community,” said Boyd, 50. “These people have been too good to me for me to allow that to happen.”

Boyd was promoted from assistant coach to head coach in the wake of former coach Billy Miles’ retirement last spring. The Eagles, who are off this week, have a 3-3 record.

School superintendent Charles Lackey expressed anger toward the person who mailed both the school board office and high school principal Deb Decker copies of the Roanoke Times article that reported Boyd’s conviction in April 1991. The letters arrived Sept. 25.

At least twice, Boyd passed the standard State Police background check without the conviction being revealed. With that in mind, Franklin County School Board attorney David Paxton said that school officials have done nothing wrong.

“Franklin County has done everything it is legally obligated to do,” Paxton said.

So how did the background check not reveal anything about Boyd’s legal difficulties? Paxton speculated that because it was a crime that included a small fine and no jail time coupled with the fact that it was 15 years ago, the conviction never made it from federal records to the State Police Central Criminal Records Exchange, the database from which the background check is made.

Boyd was not working in public education at the time of his conviction. He was operating a Salem hair salon, a business he’d learned from his father.

“The thing that surprised me is that somebody would bring up something from [15] years ago,” Lackey said. “That was a lifetime ago.

“This has made me angry, but not at him. I’m angry that some cowardly individual would for some unknown personal reason try to hurt Ben Boyd.”

Boyd had an emotional meeting with all the players in the Franklin County program, assistant coaches, trainers and others after football practice Tuesday evening. Boyd told everybody at the meeting about the letters to school officials and discussed his history with steroids. The coach was clearly distraught.

“He could hardly talk,” senior co-captain Marc Mason said. “This was something that happened [15] years ago. Why bring it up now? Ridiculous.”

Bill Mason, Marc’s father, echoed his son’s thoughts.

“Who doesn’t have a skeleton in his closet?” Bill Mason said. “He’s doing everything he can do to get his team ready to play ball and now this.”

The elder Mason, who said he’s known people who have died as a result of steroid abuse, said he had no problem with his son playing for a coach with Boyd’s background.

“Who better to talk about the dangers of steroids than somebody who has had experience with them?” Bill Mason said. “It’s like an alcoholic — nobody knows more about the dangers of drinking.”

Boyd reiterated Tuesday that he had not taken steroids since his conviction. He also said that he had never sold steroids or promoted their use to any of the members of any of the seven high school teams with which he’s been associated as a coach, nor to anybody else. He said he’d be happy to discuss the dangers of steroids with anybody who wanted to listen.

Boyd said he has never suspected anybody at Franklin County or on an opposing team of using steroids.

Marc Mason said his coach would never promote performance-enhancing drugs. In fact, according to Mason, Boyd is a complete stickler for a proper diet coupled with exercise while training for football.

“He doesn’t even like for us to drink protein shakes and take the GNC stuff,” Mason said.

Salem police arrested Boyd at his hair salon in August 1990 after obtaining search warrants on a package and the salon. Police found 300 tablets of Oxandrolone Spa, three boxes labeled Primobolan Depot, one vial labeled Testosterone Cypionate, three vials labeled Nandrolone Deconoate, two vials labeled Testosterone Cypionate, 210 hypodermic needles, $860 cash and a handwritten note.

The police had become involved after a postal clerk noticed that Boyd was sending express-mail packages with incorrect return addresses. The clerk contacted the U.S. postal inspector.

Boyd was indicted on federal felony charges of illegal possession of steroids. But the felony charges were dismissed based on a “strategical decision,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Arenda Allen told The Roanoke Times in 1991.

Boyd pleaded guilty in 1991 to the misdemeanor charges. Boyd was found to have introduced one bottle of testosterone and two bottles of anavar, both prescription drugs, into interstate commerce. He also was found to have dispensed the drugs without obtaining authorization from a licensed practitioner.

Boyd was charged with misbranding various types of steroids because the labels did not include the warning “Caution: Federal law prohibits dispensing without prescription.”

When convicted, Boyd was sentenced to 18 months probation and fined $250. He also had to undergo drug tests. Glen Conrad, the U.S. Magistrate who presided over the case, told Boyd at the time that had there been any evidence to support allegations that he had sold steroids to others, including juveniles, then he would have been jailed for a substantial period of time.

Boyd testified that he obtained the steroids through the mail and at a bodybuilding competition. He admitted to having purchased the steroids for his own use.

“I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t use them anymore,” he said during his sentencing hearing, according to the Roanoke Times account.

When Gibson first heard of Boyd’s legal problems last spring from an anonymous source, he looked into them. Gibson, a former football coach himself at Franklin County, said that his subsequent investigation revealed nothing to indicate Boyd was not qualified to serve as coach.

After talking to Boyd and hearing the coach’s side of it, Gibson was satisfied that Boyd had learned from his mistakes and had not repeated them. In the six years that Gibson said he’d known Boyd as a strength and conditioning teacher and coach at Franklin County, there had never been a problem with his performance nor ever any question whatsoever about his character.

“Franklin County is lucky to have him as a teacher and coach and those who are trying to anonymously attack his character should be ashamed,” Gibson said in a statement.

Those sentiments were echoed by both Lackey and Decker, who started in their current jobs this summer.

“I stand by Ben,” Decker said. “I would hope our students and parents do the same. The experiences we’ve had with Ben as a teacher and coach have been nothing but positive.”

Boyd said that he had never said anything about his past to school officials because he had been advised by legal counsel years ago not to volunteer information about the conviction unless asked. When he was asked, he told the truth, he said.

Boyd said that he never discussed steroids with Miles, assuming that the former coach was aware of his background and past troubles and had concluded Boyd had put his past behind him. Miles could not be reached for comment.

Boyd, a Salem native, played at the old Andrew Lewis High School before graduating in 1974. Boyd, a lineman and linebacker, played in the famous Victory Stadium state championship game between the losing Wolverines and the T.C. Williams team later immortalized in the movie “Remember the Titans.”

After graduating, Boyd worked in his father’s barbershop and later went into the business himself. He volunteered as a coach at Northside under former coach Jim Hickam.

When Boyd began to participate in bodybuilding competitions, he said he began using steroids. He heard about their benefits from people he was working out with at the YMCA in downtown Roanoke. By the time he was arrested, he was already thinking about giving steroids up, he said.

“I never took some of the large doses that some people did,” he said Tuesday. “I wasn’t sure what they were doing to me.”

Boyd said that he never experienced the extremes of behavior or health problems that steroids are known to induce.

Boyd earned his undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech in 1993. Through his career, he’s taught and coached at the old Shawsville High School, Staunton River, Robert E. Lee-Staunton, Greensville County and Gloucester in addition to Northside and Franklin County. He was a volunteer at Northside and a student teacher at Shawsville.

Boyd was head coach at both Greensville County and Gloucester. He led Greensville County to its first-ever playoff victory in 1997 and was a district coach of the year both there and at Gloucester.

He left coaching to return to Salem to be with his mother, who was dying of cancer. The next year, in 2000, he was hired by Miles, who had been an assistant coach at Andrew Lewis when Boyd played there.

Boyd subsequently became track coach at Franklin County and has enjoyed a successful run in that post.

“I’ve been here since 2000 and nobody has said a word about steroids,” Boyd said. “Then I become football coach and here it comes.”

Gibson reflected many of the sentiments expressed about the steroids matter.

“Lord help us all that something we did in the distant past could be held up against us forever,” he said.