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Coaches urged to steer players away from steroids
BY ANDREW MAY, Staff Writer
Coaches from around the Metroplex gathered Sunday as Don Hooton spoke candidly about the dangers of anabolic steroids at an anti-doping summit at Frisco Liberty High School. Hard not to pay attention to a man who has experienced firsthand the deadly consequences of performance enhancing drugs.
Hooton’s son, Taylor, committed suicide in 2003 at the age of 16 after suffering from severe depression resulting from injecting anabolic steroids to bulk up for the Plano West baseball team. Soon after Don started the Taylor Hooton Foundation and has delivered his message directly to more than 35,000 parents, coaches, doctors and athletes across the country.
Sunday’s summit, sponsored by Baylor Medical Center at Frisco and also featuring speeches by Dr. Tedd Mitchell, nutritionist David Meinz and attorney Matt Barnett, was unlike the hundreds before it. It was the first time Hooton was speaking directly to coaches who have such a meaningful and lasting impact on high school athletes. He concluded the hour-long speech highlighted by a poignant video by specifically addressing the coaches in attendance. He urged them to take a proactive stance on the deadly drug that ultimately ended his son’s life.
Hooton said one in 27 high school athletes has tried or is currently taking some form of anabolic steroid. And that doesn’t begin and end with the linemen on the football team or the heavyweight wrestler. The fastest growing group of users is girls in eighth through tenth grade, according to a recent study conducted by Seventeen Magazine.
The University Interscholastic League released the results of its first year of steroid testing for athletes less than a month ago. During the 2007-08 school year, just two of the 10,117 random urine samples tested positive for steroids. Four additional samples are undergoing further tests because of elevated testosterone levels. Assuming those are all ruled positive, that would still only mean .06 percent of student-athletes tested positive, a figure that is down sharply from national averages. Hooton hopes the low percentage is the result of foundations like his spreading the word and creating awareness.
“This is so much larger a problem than the general public is aware of,” he said. “Our first objective is raising awareness about how big of a problem it really is and not just continuing to deny that it is not going on in my school or district. Second is to educate parents, coaches and teachers about how dangerous this drug really is.”
Hooton has visited half of the 30 Major League Baseball ballparks so far this summer to educate children and has spoken to every player in the women’s professional fastpitch softball league. Former United States Senator George Mitchell, who last year headed an investigation into past steroid use by major league players, recommended that Hooton hold the program for all big league baseball players, but he has yet to reach an agreement with the union.
Hooton praised FISD athletic director David Kuykendall for his desire to educate the coaches in the district and get them exposed to the message about anabolic steroids.
“It is not typical of what we usually run into with the coaching community nationally,” Hooton said. “It is extraordinarily refreshing.
“The kids sometimes don’t like to hear it because it’s hard work to do it the right way and coaches are sometimes hesitant to deal with the steroid problem because that might be their starting quarterback or whatever. Hopefully we left them with the message that it can be a life or death issue.”
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