BY TIM MORRIS
Staff Writer

Steroids have become a part of our everyday landscape.You just have to pick up a newspaper or watch television and you’ll know how entrenched they are in the sports world. If it’s not baseball players sitting before a congressional hearing, it’s news about football players.

With steroids becoming so high profile, coaches and administrators from area high schools are doing their best to stay one step ahead. Education has been the preventative response, with coaches getting the word out about the dangerous side effects of steroids, and stressing the immorality of using them to get an artificial edge.

And it doesn’t hurt to remind the young athletes that steroids, without a prescription, are against the law.

Dominick Lepore, head football coach at Freehold Township, pointed out that the subject of steroids is something he doesn’t limit to the football season.

“I talk about it all year round,” he said. “We have off season meetings with the kids. We had a clinic after school with a spokesman from the DEA (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) who spoke about steroids.”

The DEA spokesman also had a meeting with all of the physical education teachers in the district.

Howell’s veteran head coach, Corey Davies, believes that being out front and talking about steroids is working.

“The awareness is very great now; the young people are very aware of the dangers of steroids and the reasons not to use them,” he said. “By having it out front we can keep it [steroid use] where it doesn’t happen.”

By not brushing steroids under the rug and openly talking about them, parents are, according to Lepore, more aware of what harm they can do to athletes and the symptoms (like acne and mood changes) to look for.

“I meet with the football parents once a month and steroids are becoming more serious,” he said. “Parents’ eyes are a lot more open.”

One way for coaches to keep track of their athletes is through the up-to-date weight rooms in the schools. That helps keep athletes away from gyms, which are thought to be breeding grounds for steroid use.

“We want them under our guidance all the time,” Lepore said. “We like to know what they are doing.”

Steve Antonucci is the head football coach at Middletown South, one of the premier football programs in the state, and he, too, believes that it is the coach’s responsibility to monitor his players.

“Unless I’m naive to it, I think we’re blessed at our school because the kids are pretty aware of the dangers,” he said. “We monitor our kids, and if we were to find someone we suspected, we’d try to help him immediately. Any time you can educate kids about anything, it’s a worthwhile cause.”

Woodbridge High School football coach, Brian Russo, agrees, stating that coaches need to stress the dangers of steroid abuse frequently.

“The more the better,” he said. “There’s never enough being done to educate the kids.”

Old Bridge High School wrestling coach Ken Scott, one of the most successful and respected high school wrestling coaches in the state, echoes the belief that educating his athletes about the dangers of substance abuse in general is a priority.

“It has to be emphasized,” he said. “The kids hear horror stories, but it could never be pushed enough. Kids need to learn of the detriments that come later on. But kids live for today, and that can be part of the problem.

“I’d like to see more light shed on the matter. It needs more exposure.”

Bigger, stronger, faster, however, remains the goal of every scholastic athlete, whether he/she is a star, or just trying to make the varsity. Hard work is a given to become the best athlete you can.

But all the attention put on getting better has made Manalapan head football coach Ed Gurrieri think twice about what he tells his players. He wants to make sure the emphasis of weight lifting isn’t a green light to do whatever it takes.

“We have to outwork our competition,” he said. “After I tell them how important it is to get bigger, stronger and faster, I don’t want them to take it the wrong way. I’m always conscious about telling them to do it the right way.”

Gurrieri, who played college football at Wagner, said he uses the analogy of a house to make his point. A house built on a strong foundation will last, while one built on shortcuts, like steroids, is only temporary and will collapse.

“Education is always the way to go about it,” he said.

Gurrieri is very aware of the temptations — from just trying to make the team to earning a college scholarship — that could drive a young high school athlete to turn to steroids. That’s why he constantly monitors his Braves.

“We test [weight lifting] every six weeks,” he added. “If there is a major jump [in performance], a red flag would go up. An athlete can improve by 10 pounds every six months. If he goes up 40 or 50 pounds and puts on 15 pounds of muscle, it’s a red flag.”

Gurrieri added that if he thought there was a widespread problem with steroids, he would recommend drug testing. Right now, in the Freehold District as well as in many other local school districts, if an athlete or any student is suspected of using steroids, they have to take a drug test.

Once thought the domain of football on the professional sports scene in America, steroids have raised an ugly face in baseball, as evidenced by the BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative) case and recent congressional hearings. That hasn’t been lost on baseball coaches like Frank Gualtieri, who has been the head coach at Freehold Township the last 10 years,

“Every year we discuss drug and alcohol abuse and one of the drugs is steroids,” he said. “This year we brought in our substance abuse counselor to talk about the pitfalls of steroids. We emphasized it more than in the past.”

Gualtieri knows the subject, having educated himself.

“I’ve attended lectures on steroids,” he said. “I know the dangers and how they work.”

The face of the steroid user may be changing. Dr. Victor Naumov, a chiropractor and human performance specialist, who is one of the founding members of The National Coalition for the Advancement of Drug-Free Athletics Inc., said that the number of girls using steroids is on the rise.

Jeannette Bruno, the head softball coach at Manalapan, said it might be time for an educational program just for girls.

It will take a team effort on the part of parents and coaches to continue the steroid battle, according to Gualtieri.

“We need leadership from coaches and parents,” he said. “We have to let kids know how steroids can mess your life up.”

Even with that, Gualtieri knows that steroids are out there, and even if not widespread, some are still taking them,

“To think they [users] are not there is foolish,” he said.

Continued vigilance is necessary, coaches agree, because the pressures on young athletes and their drive to get better won’t go away. There will always be a temptation to do whatever it takes regardless of the long-term consequences.

“Every kid will look for the edge; it’s the nature of the beast,” said Lepore. “There’s a lot of pressure out there.”

— Doug McKenzie

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