Countering the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs in school sports

By Sammy "Coach" Goldberg

IT'S NOT JUST WINNING, ITS HOW YOU WIN!

How do our student athletes go about "WINNING", once they say "NO" to performance enhancing drugs e.g. steroids?

FACTS---Because P.E. drugs work, when our kids say "NO" to using to using P.E.D'S, they know they may also be saying yes to losing.

The historical lack of a coherent alternative daily practice and procedure which, supplements the student-athlete's decision to forego use of PED, correctly identifies an unfortunate deficiency many student-athletes and coaches have noticed in the current "SAY NO TO DRUGS" approach generally practiced throughout the county.

ANALYSIS

Simply stated, what has the Board, its trustee's or the sports coaching staffs offered our student-athletes, in terms of new theories and new praxis as further incentive for our kids to not resort to PE drugs? Most student athletes see nothing more than the same "old school" "work hard" philosophy, which has always been in place.

CONCLUSION

I offer implementation of a unique student/athlete's Athletic Progress and Guidance program (APG) called "The Winning Step", We introduce our kids to Champions who won without resorting to P.E. drugs.

We offer a unique new database of experiences into sports Mastery, Excellence and Health -an experience only champions who won without P.E. drugs can deliver.

The Winning Step runs the anchor leg for the Say No to Drugs relay team, giving our kids a real alternative to using P.E. drugs and losing to those who do.

To date, the well meaning efforts of police "fronting" as coaches and other concerned citizens, acting as quasi-athletic staffs trying to deal with "drugs" in our school sports is only occasionally successful at best. Why are these police-coaches only occasionally successful? PED's (performance enhancing drugs) used for athletics are:

distinctly different from street drugs like heroine and crack-cocaine,

acquired from a different population of distributors

used by a different population and

for different reasons

Our kids recognize the differences even when others have not. The special needs of athletes requires a program radically different in focus and content from what is currently in vogue for the "usual" drug offender or potential drug offender. Many athletes who might be considering PED's would never consider drugs like heroine and crack-cocaine. While police and others have been comfortable lumping all drugs and offenders into one indiscriminate group, such linking has by their own admission failed to successfully achieve the desired goals.

A program which can successfully achieve the desired goals requires more than talk and more than just securing a moral commitment to "Say No" to PED's. The winning program requires proponents to offer athletes a continuing daily dose of demonstrable high level expertise i.e. showing kids how to excel without resorting to PED's, after they have said "No". Except in rare cases, the ideal candidates to lead such programs should be highly successful athlete (national champions), who confronted and refused to resort to PED's and still won and have gone on to become coaches.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it requires police and others to realize what's lacking is access to a coherent program once an athlete has made the decision to forego PED's. Such a program does not exist in San Mateo County. Again, except for myself, none of our current board members or other current candidates claims personal experience as a national collegiate sports champion or national level coach, nor of ever having been in the predicament of having to decide to say "No" to PED's while millions of dollars are at stake. Finally, no other candidate claims the required expertise to devise or operate such a program. A candidate with these qualifications is a needed addition to the current board.