When I was a freshman playing football for a high school in Arizona, the upperclassmen were big. They’d linger outside the weight room, arms bulging, chests like barrels, legs like tree stumps. We’d gawk and yearn with envy, flex our bony arms, peer down at our pencil-like legs, even breathlessly puff out our paper-thin chests a bit. We’d fantasize about one day being that big and bowling over even bigger linebackers on our way to the end zone. We’d romanticize the after-game celebration consisting of us on the shoulders of our fellow teammates as the fans swarm the field chanting our name in unison and the lead cheerleader pulling us down with a hug and kiss and a whisper of sweet somethings for later that night in the backseat …
Right then one of those big upperclassman football players would jolt us with a jab to the chest and tell us to go get his jock out of the laundry bin, tie it around our heads and dance like a Cyndi Lauper video. We wouldn’t do it, of course, but we would run away shrieking for our lives to be spared-and for our clothes to remain draped over our gangly bodies.
This adolescent memory finds me today because of the recent announcement by the Illinois High School Association that as soon as next school term they will begin testing student-athletes competing in state tournaments for performance-enhancing drugs. There is no doubt in my mind that many of the upperclassmen football players at my high school nearly 20 years ago were on steroids.
Now I know what you’re thinking: I’m not looking at all the variables. I have no evidence, of course. The only Mitchell Report back then was Kenny Mitchell’s book report on Lord of the Flies, which, Kenny, had nothing to do with your malodorous practice uniform. Looking back, I can still recall how big these guys were. They were cut, ripped, massive, and they were mean. I realize I was small, and to the small, even Danny DeVito looks intimidating. But I’m not small anymore, and when I picture those guys and how muscular they were back then, I can’t help but think they were taking steroids. And yes, memory can be distorted, but I remember numbers, too.
These guys were benching 300-plus pounds, squatting cement trucks, curling picnic tables. My fellow teammates and I lifted for the next three years and never came close to resembling those guys. Somehow, somewhere, someone stopped supplying the goods to our football program. I was never solicited, but if I had been by one of those big dudes, perhaps right now I’d be confessing to something other than my one-time affection for hair-metal rock bands-Was it White Lion, Whitesnake, or Great White?
That’s all it would have taken, a chat with one of the big dudes telling me I needed to bulk up, that if I took this, I’d eventually look as big as him. Pathetic isn’t it? But we’re naïve when we’re young-that’s because we’re young.
That’s why the IHSA is doing the right thing, albeit probably 20 years late. It’s necessary, especially with performance-enhancing drugs finally being dealt with at the professional level.
Now I can flex my arms with pride, despite the soreness.
contact: bspencer@wjinc.com