National Collegiate Athletic Association

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The NCAA News -- July 19, 1999

Competitive-safeguards panel stresses supplement education

The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports emphasized the importance of education concerning the use of supplements in collegiate athletics during its recent meeting.

The committee met June 21-22 in Beaver Creek, Colorado.

Frank D. Uryasz, NCAA director of sports sciences, said that educating student-athletes about supplements is important to prevent the use of products that are harmful or may cause a positive drug test.

"Some supplements have NCAA-banned substances in them," Uryasz said. "The committee feels very strongly that education about these supplements will help student-athletes to see potential risks."

The committee's drug-education/drug-testing subcommittee agreed to set aside $30,000 for a supplement education program for student-athletes.

Other subcommittee actions

The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports took the following actions as a result of the discussions of its drug-education/drug-testing subcommittee:

  • Referred discussion of year-round drug testing in Division III football to the Division III Management Council for further direction.

  • Agreed to recommend to the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet the expansion of year-round drug testing to include baseball and men's and women's swimming for the 2000-01 season.

  • Agreed not to add creatine to the list of banned-drug classes at this time pending receipt of further information on health effects.

  • Affirmed its position that the provision of weight-gain and muscle/strength-building supplements to Division I student-athletes should be nonpermissible at all times.

  • Adopted recommendations for the CHOICES program, which include requiring CHOICES schools to budget for an internal evaluation.

  • Approved minimum guidelines for institutional Alcohol Tobacco and Other Drug (ATOD) education programs and agreed to refer to the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet and Divisions II and III Management Councils for inclusion in the certification program and ISSGs. The committee also agreed to ask the sports sciences safety subcommittee to consider adding to the Sports Medicine Handbook.

    The recommended ATOD education program requires each athletics department to conduct a drug- and alcohol-education program once per semester for student-athletes. The athletics director, coach, compliance officer and sports medicine personnel also should participate in the program.

    This program should accomplish the following:

    (1) Review/develop individual team drug and alcohol policies.

    (2) Review the athletics department's drug and alcohol policy.

    (3) Review the institution's drug and alcohol policy.

    (4) Review the conference's (if applicable) drug and alcohol policy.

    (5) Review the institutional or conference drug-testing programs (if any).

    (6) Review the NCAA's alcohol, tobacco and drug policy, including the tobacco ban, list of banned-drug classes and testing protocol.

    (7) View the NCAA drug-education and drug-testing video.

    (8) Discuss nutritional supplements and their inherent risks.

    (9) Allow time for questions from student-athletes.

    Schools are encouraged to contact the NCAA for specific banned-drug and testing-protocol questions.

    Sports sciences safety

    The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports took the following actions as a result of the discussions of its sports sciences safety subcommittee:

  • Reviewed and acknowledged the efforts of Letha Y. Griffin regarding the study of the noncontact anterior cruciate ligament injuries.

  • Reviewed updates from the three NCAA-funded studies on the physiological effects of creatine (other than performance). Final reports were anticipated to be received by August 31, 1999.

  • Recommended using its allotted budget for the 1999-00 fiscal year on the following issues:

    (1) Wrestling: Broaden research evaluating the appropriateness of urine specific gravity as a measure for hydration by duplicating the original study at three sites (to increase sample size) using wrestlers as subjects. A primary focus is whether 1.020 is the appropriate cutoff value for a hydrated state.

    The subcommittee also proposed a survey that would evaluate, among other things, current weight-loss practices, eating behaviors, supplement use, and differences in attitudes between incoming freshmen and upper classes regarding weight-loss behaviors.

    (2) Catastrophic injury: Agreed that this research was still valuable and applicable to the NCAA.

    (3) ACL meeting: These dollars previously had been approved for partial funding of the June 14, 1999, ACL conference.

    (4) NCAA Injury Surveillance System (ISS) Consultation.

    (5) Creatine: Recommended potential continued funding pending results of current NCAA studies.

    (6) Reviewed a proposal to perform a national validation of a screening test for eating disorders.

  • Considered the appropriate application of funding for the Injury Surveillance System. It was recommended that a half-day meeting with potential consultants and NCAA information services staff be added to the January 2000 meeting. Staff was directed to draft guidelines for potential consultant proposals and forward them for distribution to the 28 accredited public health programs.

  • Discussed the relatively high injury rate in women's gymnastics and recommended initiating dialogue with the NCAA Women's Gymnastics Committee on this issue.

  • Reviewed serious injury data from fall and spring football practices and discussed long-range plans after the third year of modified spring football rules. Recommended that a survey of student-athletes regarding how spring practice rules are being applied and their effectiveness be conducted during the upcoming season.

  • Recommended that subcommittee chair Bryan W. Smith and Jim Scott attend the National Wrestling Coaches Association meeting in August to discuss results of the previous season's research project.

  • Recommended supporting the National Eating Disorders Screening Program (NEDSP) the same way it did in 1998. Smith was asked to develop a case study of how the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has applied the NEDSP to its athletics department.