THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 30, 1996 TAG: 9601300411
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
Because playing high school sports is a privilege, I don't begrudge a school district to put any conditions it pleases upon students who also want to be athletes.
If in its wisdom a district feels its athletes must quote Proust, wear polka dot socks and eat paste before they're allowed to play football or field hockey, so be it.
Of course, not one kid would play on that district's teams. Parents and teenagers would storm the administration building, and I'd leap to join the class-action suit against the decision-making yo-yos whose heads ought to roll.
But if monitoring for drugs was the only caveat, and I objected to my little shortstop being tested, I'd have no case. The Supreme Court said so last June - schools can make kids pee in a cup before they let them play.
Last week the public school administration in Norfolk became the first in the area to openly discuss using the muscle that Court decision handed it. Troubled by reports of increased drug use in its schools, the School Board floated the merits of testing athletes - and possibly others involved in extracurricular activities - randomly in an effort to reverse that trend.
The idea, I take it, is that because athletes are considered role models and student leaders, a reduction in drug use in their ranks would influence the entire student body away from drugs.
I'd say that's blindly optimistic, if not far-fetched.
Now, I empathize with administrators and faculty and parents who are terrified of the drug scourge. I'd gladly send my kid through a drug test to play ball. However, I'm not confident that a sweeping, grandstanding ploy, which is what this sounds a little like, would be even a pebble in the pool nor near worth the investment.
Yvette Miller, supervisor of secondary instruction in Lynchburg's schools, disagrees. Hers is the only district in the state that regularly tests athletes for drug use.
It spends $35,000 a year with a private contractor, $20 per test, and tests every team once per season on an unannounced date. On that same date, up to five percent of that season's other athletes may be randomly chosen, so some individuals are subject to multiple tests.
The program, heartily endorsed by parents, has reduced athletes' drug use, says Miller, who oversees the program. It has never been challenged. And if even one drug-using student-athlete was detected and helped, the $35,000 would be worth it, she says.
``It heightens awareness of drug use and helps to maintain the integrity of the athletic programs,'' says Miller, who notes that athletes who test positive are removed from their teams for two weeks and enter counseling programs.
However, Miller admits there's no evidence that the program has one iota of influence among the regular student body, which in Norfolk is the announced greater goal.
Fairfax County's schools are reportedly mulling an athlete-testing program too, but one based more upon reasonable suspicion. Through months of practices and games, athletes spend countless more hours with faculty members than do non-athletes. Over that time, symptoms of drug use are bound to show themselves.
The more efficient way for a cash-strapped district to help that boy or girl might be to continue normal drug education and administer a quiet, individual test instead of throwing a bunch of tests at a team just to see what develops. Lynchburg, for example, tests for steroids on the basis of suspicion.
If the problem in the halls is real, you can't fault schools for trying to use an opening provided by the Supreme Court. Still, it's interesting that the only targets are kids who are mostly trying to better themselves and their schools - while many on more dangerous paths get high in the parking lot at halftime. by CNB