Steroid testing ensures equality among high school athletes

Dennis Sun | Entertainment Editor

It’s been four years.  Four years of hard work and emotional stress and competing and you are finally at your senior year CIF race.  Everything goes perfectly and the race just seems to fall into place.  But, out of nowhere another random competitor manages to steal the first place title in the last few steps of the race.
Of course the disappointment settles in, but how could one be mad at the winner.  They won fair and square, right?  Well how can people be certain, with the increased use of steroids in high school sports?
It’s not fair that someone can take the easy way out with their training and get away with it.
According to orthosupersite.com, an estimated 4-12% of high school boys and 3.3% of high school girls have tried steroids.
If we were to assume this is true for our school, this would mean that about 285 of our roughly 2,150 students have tried anabolic steroids.
Anabolic steroids are a synthetic version of testosterone.  These steroids can stunt bone growth in athletes, giving them permanent problems.
With these possibilities for unfair advantage why is it that high school athletes are not drug tested?  After all, competing in a high school sport is not a right, it’s a privilege.
If these tests are too pricey then parents should be required to pay a fee to have their athlete tested before the athlete can enter CIF.
Steroids make it more likely for an athlete to get injured.  With higher chances of getting caught, athletes may think twice before using steroids in the first place.
The pressure from parents, coaches, and fellow athletes may be overwhelming, but by working and succeeding the right way athletes get more of a reward in the long run.
So why wouldn’t we test for an illegal substance that would help athletes cheat?  This could be because parents or trainers support their athletes taking steroids, and maybe even supply them with the substances.
It’s not right that high school students should get away with something that is strictly enforced in professional sports.  That only encourages cheating rather than playing fair.

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