Schools hope for more than 'rhetoric' in IHSA testing plan
Complete details of the new drug testing program for high school athletes in Illinois could be unveiled as soon as next month.
Meantime, suburban high school athletic directors say they're withholding judgment.
"Unless you think through all of the implementation, it's nothing more than rhetoric," Bartlett High School Athletic Director Dan Kallenbach said when the Daily Herald first reported plans for the testing last month. "I think it's a noble effort. I just don't want to jump into something that hasn't been thought through."
Illinois High School Association staffers said the plan, which board members unanimously approved Monday, has been hashed over -- and hashed over again.
"We have a draft of the policy we've been working on for nearly two years," said Marty Hickman, executive director of the IHSA Board of Directors. "We're way down the road. We could have presented all the details at the January board meeting."
Board members will learn the full details of the plan at their monthly meeting in February, or March at the latest, Hickman said.
Athletes, parents and school officials can learn about the testing program at a dozen different town hall meetings the IHSA plans to hold across the state.
For now, only students participating in the post-season will be subject to the test.
The IHSA still needs to tie up a few loose ends, such as which lab will do the testing and who will serve as medical review officer.
The association also has yet to outline consequences for athletes who test positive, though Hickman said the penalties likely will be for the individual rather than the team.
Suburban educators said they can't support or oppose the program until those sorts of details are made public.
"I'd have to know more about it," Robert Quinn, athletic director at Wheaton Warrenville South High School, said last month. "One of the things that didn't make sense to me is the timing of consequences. Let's say we test a student-athlete for steroid use, and then allow him to play, and it comes back as a positive test. What are the consequences that are meaningful?"
The timing of the program could preclude not just meaningful consequences, but meaningful tests, drug testing experts say.
Oral steroids, which are most popular among athletes subject to drug tests, disappear from a person's system in hours or days, said Frank Uryasz, president of the National Center for Drug Free Sport, which administers drug-testing programs for the NCAA, minor league baseball, New Jersey high schools and the NBA.
"That's why you'll see organizations move to year-round testing, because you could have an athlete use all the way through football season and stop and pass a drug test in a post-season championship," Uryasz said.
A test that gives cheaters a pass would be worse than no test at all, Stevenson High School Athletic Director John Martin said previously.
"I don't think it's a good idea to do something unless you can do it well," Martin said. "The worst is a false negative, because the appearance is, 'Well, they're fine,' and to me that's doing a real disservice."