IHSA, MULTIPLIERS, NEW MATH AND STEROID TESTING

At its August 6th meeting the IHSA Board expressed favor for a New Jersey Drug Testing initiative. While they have not adopted any policy yet, they are leaning toward an approach that mimics the the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wouldn't you like to work for an agency whose acronym is "WADA"?) headed by that renowned scientist executive, Dick Pound (I'm not making this up--that's really the guy's name).

However, in unreported discussion, the Board acknowledged that some changes would have to made in the testing protocol for male athletes who enjoy the unacceptable advantage of playing for a private school with no, GASP!, boundaries.

As everyone who hasn't lived under a rock knows, they don't actually test for the steroids/EPO/HGH but they test for their effect. This is done by measuring the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone. In most guys it'll be about four to one. The Board would generally consider ten to one an unacceptable rate and that would be the rate at which sanctions would apply ORDINARILY AND FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS.

The board however decided it needed a "multiplier" for private school athletes. Tentatively, although this discussion was unpublished, private school athletes whould have their testosterone multiplied by the assigned multiplier. This is necessary because stuff is just more suspiscious at private schools and it's harder to catch them at all the stuff the IHSA is certain they are doing wrong. For most private schools that multiplier would be 1.77, so an athlete testing at a relatively innocent six to one would be raised to about 11 to one and would, therefore, flunk. Of course, this would be totally the athletes fault because, if he didn't want to flunk a drug test, he should have gone to a public shool.

For schools with really good sports teams the multiplier would be two. So a regular QND player would go from an unremarkable 5.5 to 11-1 after the multiplier and, of course, flunk. Again, totally the players fault and he must live with his flagrantly anti-social choice of attending an evil "school without boundaries".

Finally, a really good player on a really good team would have a multiplier of 3, which would mean a normal four to one would be 12-1 and fail. Again, such a reckless youngster should have thought of the consequences before being born male and enrolling in a wicked private school.

The goal of this program would be to protect young people from injury and also to make sure that the QND band was handling kicking teams and the defensive backfield by the third game of the season.

We're from the IHSA. We're here to help you.