IHSA drug testing plan working

E-mail this story

Print this story

Share

The IHSA’s hope with testing for performance enhancers was more about prevention than catching offenders.

With two-thirds of the high school sports season over, no one has been caught yet – at least officially. The 264 tests performed thus far have produced six positive tests, but all six of those athletes were granted medical exemptions after providing valid reasons, from their doctors, for why they tested positive.

IHSA assistant executive director Kurt Gibson, whose duties include sports medicine, said he feels the program, which started this year, has gone according to plan.

“There might have been some trepidation about if it was going to work as well as we thought,” Gibson said. “It’s worked just like we thought it would. There have been no surprises.”

The IHSA enlists the services of Drug Free Sport, a testing service from Kansas City, Kan., to perform the tests. The IHSA has $150,000 budgeted for testing, which covers 700 tests for the year. Illinois joins New Jersey and Texas as the only state associations that test for performance enhancers.

“We don’t test for the same number in each sport,” Gibson said. “Not all sports have the same likelihood of use, but we’re not going to give badminton a pass. We do more in sports where the potential [for using] is greater.”

The testing varies in different sports. For example, football players might get tested at any point in the playoffs, while cross country runners were tested only at the state meets.

Gibson said the IHSA meets with schools when they are randomly selected to explain the process. For instance, if a football team is picked, an official will go to the school to answer questions and ask for a roster. Drug Free Sport will pick several players from that roster, and the athletic director will be notified who was chosen.

“If administrators want to tell their coaches before the game [who was selected], that’s a school decision,” Gibson said. “If they want to tell the coach or the kid, that’s on them. We don’t see any value in them playing the game and worrying about it. We suggest the fewer people who know, the better.”

Any positive test results are presented to the medical review officer, who is charged with getting the student-athlete’s family and physician to provide documentation of a medical reason that produced a positive test. Some stimulants prescribed by doctors will show up as positives.

“If the student can provide this [documentation], the MRO may say, ‘This makes sense,’” Gibson said. “This student should be granted a medical exemption.”

• Joe Stevenson covers high school sports for the Northwest Herald. He can be reached at 815-526-4513. He also can be reached by fax at 815-459-5640 or by e-mail at jstevenson@nwherald.com.