In November 1986, student-athletes found themselves up-close and personal with someone from the NCAA — someone asking for a urine sample.

Someone who then watched until the sample was produced.

That month, 20 years ago, the Association conducted championships drug testing for the first time, during the Division I Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Championships in Tucson, Arizona. Soon after, the NCAA conducted the first tests for football bowl game participants.

"We really didn’t anticipate how the athletes would respond to actually meeting someone who said, "I’m from the NCAA,’ " admits Frank Uryasz, who established the testing program as a member of the national office’s sports sciences staff. "It was an interesting reaction."

Suddenly, the NCAA wasn’t a "bunch of old guys sitting around a table making rules," as Uryasz puts it. "All of a sudden, they were seeing a little different face on the NCAA."

And the response wasn’t always friendly. After all, it was a time when drug testing for any reason — not just athletics competition — still was unusual.

"We encountered situations where some were belligerent, some were very rude to the crews, and in some cases the coaches were of no help and sometimes made matters worse," Uryasz said. "We had a few cases where we had athletes who we knew were hiding out, and in fact we had suspicions that perhaps coaches and other people in the university were involved in that."

Over time, though, student-athletes have developed noticeably different attitudes toward testing, which now occurs not only at NCAA championships but also year-round on campuses of Divisions I and II institutions.

Some are nonchalant.

"It didn’t bother me at all. It was just part of what we did — we just went and got it done," says Eric Patterson, a football and track student-athlete during the late 1990s at the University of Kansas who was comfortable enough with testing that he works today for The National Center for Drug Free Sport, Inc. That is the organization Uryasz founded in 1999 to conduct testing for the NCAA.

Others are appreciative.

"I think it’s really needed, and needs to stay as strict as it is," says Todd Bates, whose support is noteworthy because he tested positive in the year-round program for ephedra in 2003 as a football defensive lineman at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and lost his junior season of eligibility.

Others say it has become a hallmark of college sports.

This year, as Division III — the only division that does not currently conduct year-round testing — wrestled with an NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports recommendation to conduct a pilot on-campus program, the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee didn’t resist the idea.

In fact, the SAAC apparently became the first student group in NCAA history to formally endorse the idea of drug testing — as long as it’s complemented by effective educational efforts that focus on both drugs and alcohol.

"I was surprised that everyone on the SAAC was on the same page. We were fine with testing, because we were talking about the spirit of collegiate athletics," said Heather Mathis, one of the committee’s two representatives serving on the Division III Management Council, which decided to support the program and then helped persuade the Division III Presidents Council to approve the voluntary program. "We see all this stuff going on with pro sports...and I think that has pushed the way student-athletes are thinking now.

"In collegiate sports, there is a distinction, and we wanted to make sure we still have that distinction."

The people who conduct the testing and collect the samples can see the changes, too.

"It was contentious, in some ways, in ’86," Uryasz said. "But we never have that anymore."

There is proof not only anecdotally, but also in survey data.

Just during the past six years, the percentage of student-athletes who agreed they should be tested by the NCAA increased significantly. In 2001, 56.5 percent of respondents to the NCAA Study of Substance Use Habits of Student-Athletes supported drug testing; four years later, the percentage increased to 63.7 percent.

More student-athletes also believe that drug testing is deterring usage: 60.3 percent said so in 2005, compared to 55 percent in 2001.

"We have objective data from 1985 up to 2005 of shifting attitudes toward drug testing," Uryasz said. "When you look at those data, you’ll see — because we ask them their degree of agreement with certain statements, like: ‘The Olympics should be testing Olympic athletes.’ ‘The pros should be testing pro athletes.’ And the most important one: ‘I agree or disagree that drug testing is an effective deterrent.’

"Since 1985, we have seen a greater acceptance of those statements in support of drug testing."

Uryasz believes a steady expansion during the past 20 years of testing by institutional athletics programs — and then implementation in 1990 of year-round, on-campus testing for performance-enhancing substances by the NCAA — helps explain student-athletes’ growing comfort with testing. Testing became less threatening, he said, because more student-athletes experienced it in the comfort of their own campuses, and also because student-athletes, coaches and administrators began to perceive that the NCAA program wasn’t a "witch hunt" but rather an emphasis of well-being through deterrence.

"I think the year-round program really helped with the intimidation factor, because the athletes became more comfortable with drug testing," Uryasz said. "They’d been tested on their own campus, so when they were tested at a championship or bowl, it didn’t come as a surprise."

Societal change also helps explain student-athletes’ increased comfort with testing, suggested Mary Wilfert, NCAA associate director of educational outreach.

"I certainly would agree that they expect it," she said. "It’s been part of their lives as long as they’ve been involved in athletics, once they got into high school, where there was at least a potential for (testing). It’s been part of employment, in fast-food service and so forth. So I think there’s an acceptance that this is part of being cleared for participation."

The Division III SAAC’s recent recommendation suggests that student-athletes not only accept drug testing, but are beginning to demand it.

"I was surprised by the level of demand we heard in the Division III meetings," Wilfert said. "I’d say I’d heard only mixed demand before that point. I don’t think we even had asked student-athletes to have a voice on this. It was really enlightening to hear that they want a level playing field; they don’t want to be up against (an opponent) who’s juiced up and has an unfair advantage."

Mathis, a recent soccer student-athlete at Maryville College (Tennessee) who is now a compliance intern at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, agrees that was a factor in Division III student-athletes’ support for testing.

"We’re playing for the love of the game — we always say that," she said. "It’s just not fun when you’re competing against other student-athletes you feel aren’t abiding by the same policies you are."

"Keep in mind," Uryasz said, "that the kids in college today were born the year the NCAA started drug testing. So they’ve grown up not only in a world where athletes are drug tested all the time, but they’ve grown up in a world where — and it’s unfortunate — we now question every exceptional performance and wonder whether it was drug-induced. So the athletes now understand the importance of drug testing as a way to certify their performance was drug free.

"I notice that especially in sports like swimming and track and field, where the first-place athlete wants to get in and do a drug test right away to establish that he or she competed drug free," he said.

Even the former Alabama football player who lost a season of eligibility believes testing is necessary, because he believes some athletes will seek any advantage they can get when there is no fear of being caught.

"It’s needed because guys are looking for an edge," said Bates, who returned from his one-year suspension to start at Alabama during his senior season. "Some guys will look for the legal way, and take supplements that are legal, but some guys just want to go out and get the best stuff, whether it’s legal or not. They don’t show the respect — and don’t want to deal with the consequences if they get caught."

Bates, a defensive lineman, was struggling during the summer of 2002 to recover from surgery for a sports hernia that left him overweight and "sluggish" after a two-month recovery period during which he could not work out. At that time, he resumed taking a dietary supplement that his high school coach had approved for his use a few years before.

Bates said he didn’t know that one of the supplement’s ingredients, ma huang, actually is ephedra. He wasn’t worried when he reported for an NCAA test on the Alabama campus in January 2003, just a couple of days after taking a final dose of the supplement.

Initially shocked and then frustrated by the positive test and an unsuccessful appeal, Bates says he now appreciates the testing program because it not only stopped his use of what he now recognizes was a potentially harmful substance but also because his case warned teammates and student-athletes at other schools away from use of the supplement.

He says testing is needed not only to stop athletes from gaining an advantage, but to help prevent student-athletes from inadvertently harming themselves.

"I was sitting and talking with my dad, telling him about all the things I’d heard about the supplement that I was taking — that a guy died from it," Bates said, recalling the specific moment during his suspension when his attitude toward testing changed. "I just felt blessed that I was still alive, and I could still tell people the story — blessed that I was still there.

"I had fans who called me and told me they were having seizures, and they didn’t know why, and they said it was linked to (the supplement Bates took). One told me he’d been on the supplement for a while, and he thought the seizures maybe were because of a gene in his family, or whatnot. But it turned out it was the supplement, and he’s off it, and he’s three months with no seizures. It’s stories like that — as messed up as it is losing a valuable part of your career — that make it not so bad."

Coming face to face with the NCAA may not generate hostility like it did in 1986, but student-athletes who recently have experienced drug testing say it’s still "nerve-wracking."

"When you get tested by your school, it’s, ‘OK, this is inconvenient, I have to wake up early,’ and you go wherever they’re set up," said J.P. Williams, who played football during the mid-1990s at the University of Wyoming and now is an intern in the NCAA national office.

"When it’s the NCAA, you’re a little more nervous. You understand, in my case — maybe not in everybody’s case — I’m not doing anything, but you never know what can happen."

Patterson, who joined the Drug Free Sport staff a year ago, can sympathize, even though he has lengthy experience with testing, back to his days in Long Beach, California, as a standout high-school track hurdler who competed in national meets. He says his own experiences help him relate to student-athletes he encounters today — through testing as well as educational sessions at campuses.

"I can speak from personal experience and put them at ease — I’ve been through it, it’s just one of those things you have to do," he said. "Once you’re an athlete, this is what you have to expect. When I speak to them about that, it kind of puts their mind at ease and puts things into perspective. It’s not so much of an odd thing to them anymore."

If student-athletes still have a problem with drug testing, it may stem more from a pervasive belief that more student-athletes are using drugs than may actually be true.

"The SAAC came to the conclusion — we knew of people who had taken the (NCAA drug-use) survey, and they’d say what they put down on the survey, and it wasn’t what we knew from personal experience," Mathis said. "We knew it from talking with teammates and other athletes at school, being on the field and in the locker room, and also from the many other student-athletes we came in contact with."

It may be only a short step from that impression to a broader assumption — fueled by recent high-profile drug cases involving professional athletes who test positive, then claim testing is inaccurate or flawed.

"If you read enough of that, you’d think we have no idea what we’re doing," Uryasz said. "But there’s a lot of smart, committed people working in this (testing) industry, and it’s not perfect but there’s a lot of things we’re pretty good at. So when we get a positive, I think it sends a good message.

"The other side of the sword is, I worry when a young person reads these stories, they begin to believe the norm is drug use — that everyone is using, or that you have to use to win. Obviously, that’s not the message we want to send, nor is it the truth. The truth is, most athletes compete drug free."

Even if the drug-use survey under-reports drug use, as Mathis said SAAC members believe, authorities say the large majority of student-athletes do not use substances.

"We know from our studies that most student-athletes don’t use," Wilfert said. "That’s one thing that gets lost sometimes in the effort to assure we are deterring use by those who are — which is a very small percentage."

The reasons student-athletes accept and increasingly support drug testing clearly vary. For example, Division III student-athletes’ endorsement is driven in part by simple curiosity about the scope of drug use in the NCAA’s largest membership division.

"We don’t want people to think SAAC is saying we have a major problem," Mathis said. "It’s that we’re not afraid of testing. It’s possible Division III can say, look, we came through the pilot with flying colors — we don’t have this problem."

In the end, a better understanding of the problem’s scope may be an even greater deterrent to substance abuse than testing, Wilfert suggests.

"When we know the majority of kids aren’t using, and when SAAC speaks out against it, and there’s lots of visible messages in the locker room and training room, I think it all contributes to a climate that deters use," she said. "One of the reasons getting messages out about majority attitudes and behaviors works is because it reinforces where student-athletes are at — they don’t feel like they’re spinning their wheels or spitting in the wind.

"If they know the majority of their fellow students aren’t using, they feel good about saying, ‘I don’t use’ — and speaking out against people who do."