Beginning at an unspecified date this school year, University Interscholastic League high school athletes will have to shed their jackets and sweaters at the bathroom door and empty the contents of their pockets before undergoing a substance test. Once inside the bathroom, students can only rinse their hands with water, no soap allowed.
These are just some of the restrictions that will be implemented under the newly-developed statewide UIL Banned Substance Testing Program, according to details released Wednesday.
The program will test urine samples from 20,000 to 25,000 students for steroids yearly in compliance with a senate bill passed by the 80th Texas Legislature, said Kim Rogers, spokeswoman for the league. Students may be tested more than once in the school year.
The league is testing for anabolic steroid variations programmable into a testing machine, John Hoberman, UT Department of Germanic Studies chair and expert on steroid use said.
"If there is a molecule that hasn't been programmed in the machine, it's not going to show up on the print out," Hoberman said. "It will go unidentified."
Details of the program are under public review. After considering public response and possible revisions, UIL will take the
program in for final legal review and have a vendor in place to conduct testing, Rogers said.
The state has appropriated
$6 million over this school year and next for the program, she said.
Under the program, any student who tests positive for banned substances or refuses to be tested will be suspended from athletic participation for 30 days. For the second offense, students will be banned for a year, and for the third offense, students will be forbidden from athletic activity for the remainder of their high school career.
Before collecting approximately 90 mL of urine from each student athlete, the monitor will put a dyeing agent in each toilet bowl to make sure no urine was substituted. The student will raise his or her shirt so that the monitor has a clear view of midsection area to make sure urine is not swapped or manipulated.
The student won't be able to call anybody except parents or legal guardians to ask them to be witnesses to his or her urine
collection.
If the parents or legal guardians for that student don't arrive within an hour of the call, the student will have his or her urine collected anyway.
Urine samples will be tested for their relative density, temperature and pH level. Temperature of the urine must be between 90.5 and 99.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
All urine samples will be shipped to a testing laboratory after which they become property of UIL.
A nationwide study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, showed that steroid use among eighth and tenth graders decreased in 2005 since its peak in 2000. Steroid use among high school seniors dropped 1 percent in 2005 from its use of 2.5 percent in 2004.
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