Passing grades for IHSA drug-testing program

No news really is good news when one of the IHSA’s latest programs is concerned.

None of the 264 athletes tested for performance-enhancing drugs for fall sports was in violation, according to the association. The half-dozen athletes with a positive test had a medical waiver for prescription drugs.

Illinois is one of three states with testing for steroids, human growth hormones and other performance-enhancing drugs. The others are Texas and New Jersey. Florida’s program, the first in the country, was halted last year when funding ran out.

The IHSA plans to test about 700 athletes this school year. That’s a minuscule fraction of the approximately 336,000 who participate in IHSA-sanctioned sports, but may be enough to throw a mental roadblock at athletes looking for an unfair edge.

“We, from the beginning, said this program is designed to be a deterrent,” said Kurt Gibson, the IHSA’s assistant executive director in charge of the program. “If it was designed to identify athletes, it would be a whole different program. We test and we have an educational component on our Web site.”

The tutorials on the IHSA’s Web site can stand alone as references for athletes and staffers alike, but are designed, Gibson said, to reinforce what school administrators tell their athletes.

Two bowlers from Oak Forest’s boys team were tested during the state finals Jan. 30 in O’Fallon, athletic director Sue Bonner said. Neither test was positive.

“When I heard about it, I thought, ‘Bowling?’ ” Bonner said. “There’s a beer frame, but not a steroids frame. After the first round, they were taken to a high school in the area where the test was administered.”

Bonner said that when she took over as athletic director, she looked into a drug testing program, but had to shelve the idea.

“It is so expensive,” Bonner said. “It’s amazing how much money it costs.”

Homewood-Flossmoor and Marian Catholic have drug testing. Marian’s testing covers the entire student body, while Homewood-Flossmoor’s program, which began in 1990, is part of the athletic program, financed by the fees students pay to play a sport. Neither school tests for steroids, as the testing would be extremely expensive. Both schools test for recreational drugs and alcohol.

“We do it twice a month,” Homewood-Flossmoor athletic director Joe Skowronski said of the random selection. “Every kid is assigned a number and when his or her number comes up, they’re tested.”

As with the IHSA’s tests, the simple existence of the program is a deterrent.

“We usually get a couple (positive tests) a year,” Skowronski said. “Experimenters. If we get a positive, there’s intervention. They get time off from their sport.”

The first positive test means a minimum two-week suspension from the sport. A second positive is a four-week suspension, and a third is a minimum of a one-year ban. Any H-F athlete testing positive must go through a program that includes an assessment from a chemical dependency counselor.

The tests at the bowling finals demonstrate the breadth of the IHSA’s program. It covers every sport, rather than a few. Florida’s short-lived program tested only in football, baseball and weight lifting. It ended when the state legislature stopped providing funding.

The IHSA is self-funding its program, expected to cost $150,000 this year.

The only problems with the IHSA program have been timing, Gibson said. The tests, in which employees of the National Center for Drug Free Sport, a Kansas City, Mo.-based company, get urine samples from athletes, are conducted after a game or meet concludes. In some cases, a school didn’t have a second bus or van available to take back the tested athletes. In those cases, everybody had to wait up to 90 minutes.

“It’s gone very smoothly,” Gibson said. “We tested at different times during state playoffs, some at early rounds, some at state finals, some at all rounds. In a couple of instances, schools expressed concern with midweek events. Things went according to Hoyle with the tests, but the games ran longer than they would have liked.”

He added that, as the program evolves beyond the first year, some tests may be conducted in advance of competitions.

Drug Free Sport, which numbers among its clients the NFL, NCAA, Major League Baseball, Big Ten and the PGA Tour, selects both the contests at which to test and whom to test. The IHSA and the schools are notified a couple of days in advance in team sports to arrange travel plans, Gibson said. In individual sports, as in the case of Oak Forest’s bowlers, athletes find out when they show up at the state final site.

Illinois’ results are in line with those in the other testing states. New Jersey had one positive test out of about 500 in its first year, while Florida had 1 in 600 and Texas, where the state legislature financed a $6 million program, had two positive tests in its first 10,117 tests.

“It should be a great deterrent,” Marist athletic director Tom Schergen said. “It makes kids think.”

Tim Cronin can be reached at tcronin@southtownstar.com or(708) 633-5948.