Ricky's Essay

How are college athlete effected by supplement abuse? What are some of the long term affects?
How are supplements monitored in college sports? Do you find that college athletes find it necessary to use supplements now, to go that extra mile?

On our trip to Boston we visited Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern, and The Boston Globe. I learned a lot of new things on our visit, from, health and nutrition at Boston University, to sport criticism at The Globe. At Boston University we had a work-out session with the performance-enhancement instructor, and we talked to a nutritionists and a sports psychologist. At Boston College we talked to with the people at the Football program, on how they finance their program and their training. At Northeastern we talked to the Baseball coach, he had a vast range of knowledge on all of our subjects. At The Globe we spoke with the head guy, there we asked him about numerous subjects, from, how they get the papers out in the morning, to the effect of performance enhancement drugs on athletes.

Most young athletes can tell you that the competitive drive to win can be fierce. For a growing number of athletes, winning at all costs includes taking performance-enhancing drugs. The long-term effects of performance-enhancing drugs haven't yet been rigorously studied. In most amateur sports, the athletes who win are those with the greatest strength, speed or endurance. Athletic performance has more to do with skill and hard work than popping a pill or downing a super-drink. Concern is growing that young athletes will follow sports figures who use performance-enhancers in a search to gain a competitive edge.

From what I learned on my visits, most colleges encourage performance enhancers such as creatine and protein, and have consequences should an athlete be caught using an illegal performance enhancer. The colleges that we visited said that they have no real big problems with supplement abuse at there schools, and if so it is very secretive. The supplements that are encouraged like creatine and protein are usually monitored by coaches and people like the instructor at Boston University who specifically work with athletes on that. So in reality Performance enhancement drugs are really not a problem with the colleges that we visited, therefore my question wasn’t really a good one.