High school’s drug prevention and healthy living program for athletes is the only one in the state.
By Elizabeth Michalka
Athletes at Wake Forest-Rolesville High School are reading a new kind of ATLAS – Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids, that is.
Wake Weekly staff writer
ATLAS, developed by Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), is a drug prevention and healthy behaviors program for male high school athletes, with a focus on steroid abuse. WF-R is the first high school in the state to use the program, said Chuck Hess, WF-R athletics director.
Hess said he wanted to initiate the program because he has read too much about your athletes who have fallen to the temptation of drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
OHSU reports about 11 percent of male teens have used anabolic steroids, and they are often involved in other high-risk behaviors.
“There may not be as much of it [steroids] in high school, but any time they go out to a gym, they are exposed to it,” Stephanie Doner, Wake County health educator, said. ”They’ve told me that they’ve seen it out there.”
“I think there’s more steroid abuse in all ages, all sports,” John Kuzora said. He played for the New York Giants for two years as an offensive lineman and now is a volunteer speaker for ATLAS classes at WF-R.
“It’s an issue I can identify with,” Kuzora said. ”I was definitely around a lot of people who made that mistake.”
This is the second semester that Doner, of Youngsville, has taught ATLAS at AF-R.
“It’s a real problem right now,” Doner said. ”Athletics are being tainted with this terrible thing.”
Even one of the most respected sporting events, the Olympics, has been tarnished by suspicion and accusations of steroid use among athletes. During the 1988 Summer Olympics, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his medals after he tested positively for steroids. During the 2004 Summer Olympics, seven medals, including three gold, were revoked because of doping.
Doner said her goal is to teach athletes about the dangers of steroids as well as other drugs and alcohol.
“There are a lot of good life lessons they’re learning,” Doner said.
Athletes in the program are not only learning about the side effects of drug and alcohol use, but also about proper nutrition, teamwork and leadership.
“They’re learning how to not value things that are unhealthy,” Doner said. ”If they develop healthy habits now, they’ll be healthier in life.”
Athletes take the program as part of their physical education instruction, during regular health classes and after school, Hess said.
“It’s not a graduation requirement,” Hess said. ”But that’s something I’d love to see happen.”
The program encourages physical exercise and a balanced diet. Group work and mentoring, which take advantage of positive peer pressure, are also promoted.
Doner said ATLAS is successful because it allows the students to teach each other.
“When you’re in a group, other people listen to you,” Damian Lee, a WF-R football player who took that ATLAS class last spring, said. ”It’s a better learning habit for all of us.”
High schoolers are most influenced by their peers, and often learn more from them than from teachers, Doner said.
“They’re not going to want to have some of the side effects from drugs that all their peers laugh at,” Doner said.
Anabolic steroids increase muscle mass and strength but have un wanted side effects, including cancer, high blood pressure, depression, balding, increased breast size and heart and liver disease.
If taken at an early age, steroids can stunt growth and shrink testicles.
Kuzora said steroid abuse can actually cause injuries because while the muscles are stronger, the connective tissues that connect muscles are not.
Steroid use also causes hormonal imbalances, severe mood swings and uncontrollable rage, Doner said.
“There things [steroids] are not something you want to play with,” she said.
The fact that ATLAS is a preventative program will help keep high school athletes from being lured in by the aesthetic benefits of steroids, Doner said.
Lee said he plans to make healthy choices and “not do some things that I think other students do” — because of what he learned through ATLAS.
One of the program’s goals is to make the athletes stronger, but through healthy means.
The athletes receive instruction in muscular endurance, strength training and quickness to boost their natural steroid, testosterone.
WF-R football coach Earl Smith said he believes ATLAS will help to make the athletes more well-rounded, and even though the program is new, he’s noticed that the students are trying to make healthier choices for lunch.
“I think they’re listening, and they trying to make a change,” he said.
Reprinted from The Wake Weekly, Wake Forest, NC, 2004.
