Sometime during the next two years, a number of Division II student-athletes will be exposed to a new experience: NCAA drug testing.

On August 1, new Division II legislation took effect that requires year-round testing in all sports. Until now, year-round testing in Division II has occurred only in football, except for a brief year-round pilot program in baseball in the spring and fall of 2002.

Division II traditionally has chosen to target only football for year-round testing because of expense concerns and a belief that the use of performance-enhancing drugs was more prevalent in that sport.

However, the 2001 NCAA drug-use study revealed reported ephedrine and steroid use in virtually all NCAA sports at levels approaching those reported for football. The trend was sufficient for the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports to encourage Division II to implement year-round testing in all sports.

"If our student-athletes in every sport know that at any time they could be tested, that would be the most significant inhibitor versus trying to select particular sports," said Division II Management Council Chair Sue Willey, director of athletics at the University of Indianapolis. "Besides, why should some student-athletes be held to a standard of knowing that they could be tested while others aren't?"

While some may regard drug testing as merely another extension of the NCAA's regulatory culture, Mary Wilfert, NCAA assistant director of education outreach, said that the program is much more positive than that.

"This program is a student-athlete benefit," she said. "Not only does it provide us with the opportunity to address student-athlete drug use where it is occurring, it also helps to protect the vast majority of our student-athletes who do not use performance-enhancing drugs from competing against the few who do."

Statistics support Wilfert's assertion that most Division II athletes are not using drugs. As an example, for the most recent reporting period (August 2002-June 2003), a total of 2,198 samples collected in the year-round and championships segments for Division II football yielded only 31 positive results. That means 98.6 percent tested negative, similar to the 98.9 negative rate revealed for Division I football year-round and championships testing.

While most student-athletes likely avoid performance-enhancing drugs because they know of their dangers, others undoubtedly stay away for fear of being caught by testing programs. Willey said that while she respects the importance of education, she believes that the threat of being caught makes the ultimate difference.

"Knowing that they can be tested is a more significant deterrent," she said. "In the past, there hasn't been that stipulation, so it's always been kind of like a green light -- if you're in these sports, you don't worry about it unless you get to the playoffs and then maybe you'll get tested."

Financing

Although Division II had little trouble making the philosophical commitment to year-round testing, it was more challenged to pay for it. Testing for steroids is expensive -- about $125 per sample -- and Division II resources are limited.

The money was found by reducing the number of year-round tests in football from 14 per site to 12. Those two tests were reallocated and two tests added so that four student-athletes could be tested in sports other than football. The budget impact for the new tests and additional campus visits will be about $100,000.

While the testing will be for all sports, the number of tests will be weighted toward sports that are heavily sponsored and those thought to have a higher risk, as determined by responses to the drug-use surveys. In other words, Division II rifle student-athletes may be tested, but the likelihood of being tested will be much greater for student-athletes in sports such as track and baseball.

For programs that typically don't reach championships and that don't test on their own, this will be a new experience. Michelle Dorsey, NCAA program manager for The National Center for Drug Free Sport (which oversees the drug-testing program), said that care has been taken to make the process easy to administer.

"We send the school a notification stating that NCAA drug testing is going to take place on campus," Dorsey said. "The memo tells them that they will need to submit a squad list to our office for random student-athlete selection. It tells them about how we will make selections. Then we will give them the roster of selected athletes and then they are to notify the athletes of their selection for testing and have them sign the drug-testing notification form."

Each institution already has been asked to designate a staff member as a drug-testing site coordinator. When the three-person testing crew arrives on campus, it will work with the coordinator to make certain that the testing is conducted properly.

Dorsey said that the single-most important element involves timely submission of the squad list.

"We always reiterate the bylaw about the squad list and how it is to be completed by the first date of competition," she said. "Some schools like to wait, but we always refer them to that bylaw"(the relevant legislation is in Bylaws 14 and 30).

Random testing

Although year-round testing seems to have widespread support, some concern has been expressed about which athletes are selected for testing. When the Division II Management Council discussed year-round testing during its July meeting, a number of members from football-playing institutions questioned the randomness of the selection process, noting cases in which star athletes have been chosen for repeated testing.

Such cases undoubtedly stand out, but Wilfert and Dorsey said that administrators should understand that the process truly is random, except for cases involving student-athletes who are retested after previously having tested positive.

"We don't have time to look up who the starting players are," Dorsey said. "Truly, we take the information that they give us on the squad list and we number it from 1 through, say, 100, depending on how many people they have on the team. And then we apply a random generator to that list. Let's say we need 12 names between 1 and 100. Those numbers are spit out, and we go back and we match them up with whomever had that number next to their name. That's our selection."

In the case of football, the odds are about one in eight that a student-athlete will be chosen for testing. If that institution is tested again a couple of years later, that same athlete stands a one-in-eight chance of being selected again. It is not likely that he will be chosen a second time, but neither is it far-fetched. If the team reaches a Division II championship, that same athlete could be tested again at that time. Such occurrences are rare, but they do happen.

"This was a sensitive point with the Management Council in July," Wilfert said, "but the selection process truly is random. Most student-athletes are tested only once, but it's certainly noticeable when athletes are chosen for a second or third time. If that athlete is prominent, I know it must seem as though somebody is suspicious of something. But that's not the case. Unless a student-athlete has previously tested positive, all selections are completely random."

In fact, rather than being tested repeatedly, the far greater likelihood is that individual Division II student-athletes will not be tested at all through NCAA programs. Football programs will be tested once every year (12 student-athletes at a time) while 60 percent of non-football programs will be tested at least once every other year (four student-athletes each time).

One concern with the new approach involves whether the effectiveness of football's year-round program will be diminished when the number of players tested drops from 14 to 12. Although a larger number always will produce a greater deterrence, Willey doesn't believe that the small reduction will make a difference.

"I don't think it will matter," she said. "It's a small sample to begin with, and I doubt if most of the football student-athletes are aware of how many tests are administered at a given time. If so, I don't think a small reduction like this would mean anything to them.

"But even if there is a very slight loss in the effectiveness of the football testing program -- and I do not believe that will be the case -- I think we still need to weigh that against the benefit of making student-athletes curtail use for fear of being tested."

System works best if athletes understand tests

One commonly misunderstood aspect of drug testing has to do with how well student-athletes should understand the substances for which they are being tested.

Many might believe that testers prefer for student-athletes to be in the dark on such matters since it might increase the likelihood of "catching" an individual who has used drugs. However, Mary Wilfert, NCAA assistant director for education outreach, said it is much more desirable for student-athletes to know exactly what they are being tested for.

"Our year-round program does not test for marijuana or other street drugs," Wilfert said. "Yet a number of student-athletes have believed that all of our testing checks for marijuana. To cover the marijuana use, they take masking agents, which are regarded the same as a positive when they are detected in testing. In those cases, the Association has no choice other than to apply the ineligibility penalties for a positive drug test."

One Division II athletics director said that ignorance can even result in dangerous practices. One student-athlete, panicked at the prospect of being caught, was advised by friends that his marijuana use could be masked by consuming a mixture of water and bleach. Of course, the concoction had no effect on the test, but it did affect his esophagus, which was severely burned.

Wilfert also said she is disturbed when institutions collect samples for drug tests and then pour the samples down the drain. In those cases, student-athletes who would have tested positive gain a false sense of security that their drug use will not necessarily be detected through testing. In such cases, they may continue to use drugs (and be harmed by their ongoing effects), will continue to have an unfair and illegal advantage over their opponents, and almost certainly will test positive when legitimate testing subsequently occurs.

Finally, not everybody agrees that Division II's year-round testing program should be directed exclusively at performance-enhancing drugs. Division II Management Council Chair Sue Willey, director of athletics at the University of Indianapolis, said: "I don't feel like performance enhancement is as big an issue as alcohol abuse. I think that's where our emphasis needs to be. Alcohol abuse far exceeds anything else, and we're just pulling our hair out as administrators trying to figure out how to attack the problem."

Willey said that NCAA and institutions should test for alcohol and street drugs because of the need to help young people make wise decisions.

"I don't think there is an administrator across the country who is opposed to kids drinking," Willey said. "It's drinking to get drunk that's the issue, and that seems to be the mentality. It's our job to teach responsible drinking."

Alcohol is not among the substances examined in NCAA year-round drug testing. However, the Association does direct more than $500,000 annually toward education pertaining to alcohol abuse.

-- David Pickle