Preston Williams, Washington Post high school sports columnist, recommends steroid education involving coaches, parents and truthful steroid documentaries like “Bigger Stronger Faster*” as the best way to address teen steroid use in high schools. Williams questions the effectiveness of costly high school steroid testing programs “whose merits are spotty” with “swing-and-miss results.”
In his weekly column about high school sports, Williams applauds the sensible efforts by physician Ben Pearl (Arlington Foot & Ankle Center), physical education teacher and former NFL player Rocky Belk (Arlington Public Schools), and physical therapy and sports medicine instructor Sheila Napala (Arlington Career Center) to combat anabolic steroid use in high schools (“Straight Talk Is the Best Deterrent to Steroid Use,” November 6).
So the best way, financially and otherwise, to ward off steroid use among teen athletes is probably through parents and coaches — and the old-fashioned approach that Arlington County physical education teacher Rocky Belk and Arlington physician Ben Pearl took last week.
They met with about 60 high school students from Sheila Napala’s physical therapy and sports medicine classes at the Arlington Career Center to discuss steroids and the 2008 documentary the students had watched, “Bigger Stronger Faster*.”
Steroid education approaches involving scare tactics, steroid hysteria and steroid demonization have been largely ineffective. It is refreshing to see prominent educators in the community taking an honest and straightforward approach to the topic of anabolic steroid use by providing truthful information to students.
The presentation from Pearl, a McLean High graduate, and Belk, who attended the now-closed Fort Hunt High in Alexandria and played at the University of Miami and for the Cleveland Browns, seemed to make an impression on the students, who asked pointed and smart questions.
That sort of frank give-and-take, more than the exercise of administering pricey tests whose merits are spotty, is probably the best way to address teen steroid use.
If you want to teach students about their bodies, take it to the student body.
“This needs to be talked about,” said Belk, a former football coach at Washington-Lee and Coolidge. “This is not taboo.”
High school students respond better to truthful information. Ridiculous after-school specials and silly public service announcements about anabolic steroids insult the intelligence of many teens and are ridiculed by the same. Truthful steroid documentaries like Bigger Stronger Faster*
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About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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