NCAA plans summer drug tests for Division I athletes

[rainbowgirl28]

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2397247

NCAA plans summer drug tests for Division I athletes
ESPN.com news services

The NCAA plans to conduct drug testing on Division I athletes this summer, according to a report in The NCAA News.

The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports reportedly wants the focus this year on football and baseball players, but any Division I athlete could be subject to testing.

"This has been coming for some time," Mary Wilfert, the NCAA's associate director of education outreach and staff liaison to the committee, was quoted as saying in the report. "We've previously been hesitant to test into the summer months, because of concerns about extending student-athletes' participation in a sport beyond a traditional season and also logistical considerations.

"But the reality is that student-athletes don't take the summer off."

The NCAA News reported that testing probably will occur even if athletes are not on campus, meaning tests could take place at homes, jobs or other locations.

Wilfert said that NCAA rules allow for testing at any time of the year, and athletes sign forms that tell them a test can take place from the beginning of the academic year through Aug. 31 of the following year.

[VaultMarq26]

Is it really that cost effective for the NCAA to be searching for athletes during the summer months, and pay for someone to travel to have them tested......I understand that drug testing is a necessary and important part of being a division 1 athlete, but this just seems to have too many flaws.

Sometimes athletes have only one night or a couple of hours of notification before the test. If the NCAA is calling an athlete trying to get them to take a test, why couldn't the athlete simply tell them that they can not do it for a week?

[nitro]

good point... it seems like they can cheat the system and then make the ncaa waste the money to do it

[VaultMarq26]

I can totally see why the NCAA want to do it during the summer too....there is a lot of training that goes on during the summer for a number of sports, if an athlete were to experiment with something illegal, summer is when that would happen, not during season.

[TB]

if an athlete were to experiment with something illegal, summer is when that would happen, not during season.

Exactly and that's why the NCAA is going to experiment with this.

Read the following article and you'll see why. Perhaps this is directed more towards football players since the summer is the best time for them to prepare for their fall season.

"Scukanec says college players get around testing in several ways. Since testing isn’t done from the end of school in June to the start of training camp in August, players do their six-week cycles in the summer."

http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=29338

[SKOT]

There are many athletes that lift hard and use roids during the summer to make HUGE strength gains. they taper their use as classes/practice start up again. this way the drugs are out of their systems by the time that they ever get tested.

i know that this scenario happens a lot in NCAA D3 because they do no random testing. the only time they test athletes that have never tested positive for a banned substance is at nationals.