Area athletes steer clear

Tyler Jolley has been introduced to steroids and that was all he needed to convince himself to stay away. “I met a guy on steroids once,” said Jolley, a 6-foot-3, 250-pound junior football lineman and thrower at East Valley. “He was kind of nuts. He talked to me about it. He was a guy who looked like he should weigh 150 weighing about 250. He was massive. Wow! But he was weird and I was like, ‘Leave me alone.’ ”

It’s clear steroids are out there, but there seems to be little evidence that area high school athletes are knocking down the doors to get to them.

Mead football lineman Jesse Wilhelm said he has been approached by a steroid user at a local gym.

“He just wanted to know if I wanted to use them, wanted to know if I wanted someone to get me some,” the 290-pounder said. “It was kind of a sales pitch.”

But Wilhelm, rehabbing a knee injury with assistant coach Vic Wallace so he can play football at Idaho in the fall, wasn’t interested.

“I know a little about them,” he said. “Working out with Vic, you don’t need them. Hard work.”

For most of the other athletes, steroids are mostly a rumor.

“I don’t think anyone at this school does them,” Lewis and Clark junior running back/sprinter Ethen Robinson said. “People say certain players do them but I don’t know if that’s true. When I play football around the league, I don’t see it.”

“I think it’s possible,” East Valley senior defensive lineman/javelin thrower Cody Irby said. “We’ve heard rumors in school about other schools and leagues. I’m sure it does happen. But I know what I do, and I don’t think (anyone) would risk their football careers.”

That doesn’t mean area athletes are oblivious to stories about steroid use, but when Robinson, who rushed for 1,156 yards and scored 16 touchdowns last fall, heard that a national survey pegged steroid use by high school athletes between 6 and 11 percent, his reaction was: “This is Spokane.”

Jake Hall, a junior football and baseball player at Coeur d’Alene, had a similar reaction.

“I’ve never heard of any high school students using it,” he said. “I’ve never thought about it.”

Joey Cwik, a former Mead standout and starting middle linebacker at Eastern Washington University, said it is hard to tell who uses steroids, as long as that person is working hard in the weight room.

“I was asked, a few people on my team were asked, if we took them or not,” he said of his high school days. “But even between good friends you can’t really tell because (users) are not going to tell anyone. They don’t want anyone to out them.”

But where there is smoke, there could be fire.

“That wasn’t even an option,” said former LC and Washington State star Erik Coleman, who started for the New York Jets as a rookie last season. “None of my friends did anything like that; no one I knew was involved in anything like that. When I was in high school, it was just rumors about guys from other schools. Hopefully, they just worked real hard in the weight room and did what they had to do.”

But now that he has been around and steroids have been in the news, he isn’t quite as sure.

“Now that I’m older I can definitely see where there might be some truth (about steroid use),” he said. “With all these news stories around, kids see that it’s easy to access for those with money. It could be true. I hope it’s not. When you’re that young, you don’t know the affect on your body in the future.”

Jake Flaherty a three-sport athlete at Priest River, including four-year starter in baseball, has written two essays on steroids for a college prep class.

“I know there are athletes who do steroids, but none here,” he said. “It’s cheating. If it were legal, we’d all be doing it.”

Dedication in the weight room seems to carry the day, although some athletes use the supplement creatine, including Jolley and Mead standout Skylar Jessen.

“My grade, the juniors, we’re all real strong,” said Jessen, a standout running back and sprinter. “We’ve been playing football since fifth grade, and we’ve been big into weight lifting. That’s why people accuse us of steroids, because we’ve been into it longer than they have.”

The 5-10, 205-pound Jessen, who has almost 3,000 yards and 46 touchdowns in two seasons, said he started lifting in eighth grade because his stepfather was into it.

“I’ve never been approached about (steroids),” he said. “In Spokane, it’s a small town, and I’ve never heard about it from anybody, let alone seen it.”

That doesn’t mean steroids aren’t out there, or at least the rumors about them.

“You hear them all the time,” Wilhelm said. “I’m supposed to be on them. It bugs me people say something, people who don’t even know me.”

Josh Shaw, a 6-3, 238-pounder who can put the shot 50-plus feet and run the 200 in 22-plus seconds, is more philosophical.

“I always need to get bigger, stronger and faster, but I don’t feel the need to take anything,” the Idaho-bound football player said. “I’ve never really cared what people say. I’d wonder how it came out, but it wouldn’t bug me.”

Jessen’s take was in-between.

“I don’t like how people get blamed for stuff just because they’re big and successful,” he said. “If you saw us work out at Mead, you’d know. It did (bother me) at first. Now it’s a compliment. When people say steroids, you know you’re doing something right, looking big and fast.”

Lars Slind, a former Mead standout who will be a senior fullback at Eastern Washington University, said, “Whenever athletes excel, people want to marginalize it. They want to attribute it to that person using excessive amounts of supplements or steroids. I would say (steroid use) is minimal. I’ve never seen it or witnessed it, I’ve only heard rumors about it.”