Pressure grows to test for steroids

They are good athletes, but yearn to be great -- the very best -- at their high school sport. This would not only secure them a starting role on their team and the rush of stardom that goes with that. It would also have college recruiters coming to them with scholarship offers.

Some set out to just work harder at developing their skills and their bodies to reach the height of athletic excellence.

But some take another way. A dangerous way. They take performance-enhancing drugs.

And they certainly aren't deterred when the athletes whom they strive to be like -- their heroes in the professional ranks -- are taking these drugs.

The most alarming finding in the Mitchell report is not that professional baseball players are using illegal performance enhancing drugs, but the estimate that between 3 percent and 6 percent of high school athletes are taking steroids.

Now the IHSA, the organization that governs high school sports, is considering taking action. Days after the release of the Mitchell report, it announced it is looking at implementing limited random steroid testing of high school athletes in some sports, including football.

We have questioned if high school users of steroids can be identified as reliably through random tests as they would be through watchful parents and coaches identifying teens whose performances improve a little too dramatically or who show signs of the behavior sometimes associated with anabolic steroid use.

But we also acknowledge there is growing pressure to find and help steroid users in the high schools in the wake of the Mitchell report. And we are also alarmed when Marc Brignola, executive director of The Sports Academy in Buffalo Grove, tells the Daily Herald that he estimates 25 percent of the high school athletes he knows -- mostly football players and wrestlers -- use or have used steroids.

There is no good way of knowing how many Illinois high school athletes are abusing performance-enhancing drugs. Certainly testing results could provide a better measure of the problem even while the fear of being tested can be a deterrent.

We still believe alertness to signs of steroid abuse on the part of coaches and parents, as well as education programs, can discourage abusing such drugs. But if there is to be testing, it has be focused in sports that have had a record of steroid abuse in the professional or Olympic arena: baseball, football, track and field, and wrestling. Care must be taken against false positives. There is also a matter of cost. In Texas, $3 million is being spent to test 3 percent of the state's student-athletes.

Ideally, the tests would be structured to detect steroid use during the full run of a sport, not just during playoffs.

And keep in mind that while steroid use is dangerous, the use of other drugs and alcohol among high school athletes can't be ignored.

But sadly, the pressure to test for steroids at the high school level only grows with the temptation to use them when professional athletes set the wrong example.