Drug Policy Lenient at UCLA

It was the 1994 NCAA men’s soccer final four at Charlotte, N.C., and Frankie Hejduk, a talented, free-spirited midfielder, should have been there.

Hejduk, a junior from Encinitas, was one of the standouts on a strong Bruin team making it to the national semifinals for the third time in five years.

But, according to three sources, Hejduk tested positive for marijuana use during a random NCAA test of the Bruin soccer team.

That made Hejduk ineligible to play in the semifinals against Indiana. He drew an immediate one-year suspension and therefore never suited up again as a collegiate player. Interestingly, Hejduk had received a one-game disqualifying red card for committing a foul in the quarterfinal, so he would not have been able to play in the semifinal anyway. But his positive drug test made that moot.

Hejduk, who refused comment recently when asked about those circumstances back in 1994, currently is a member of the U.S. World Cup team.

UCLA, which lost in the semifinal to Indiana that year, never disclosed that there was a situation beyond the red card that kept Hejduk out of the game. Soon, Hejduk left school to make himself available for the Major League Soccer draft, in which he was a seventh-round selection of the Tampa Bay Mutiny.

Because collegiate soccer does not draw nearly as much media attention as sports such as basketball or football, Hejduk’s Bruin disappearance--even though he was being groomed to be a senior captain in 1995--went virtually unnoticed by the public. Not so, however, in the halls of the Morgan Center, headquarters of the UCLA athletic department.

“I don’t think it was a precursor of anything, necessarily,” said one source, who also said that Hejduk’s yearlong suspension circulated through the athletic department and caused a chilling effect among UCLA athletes for a couple of years afterward. “I just think there was disappointment from everybody.”

There were, however, stronger emotions last March, when the school faced another potential problem.

According to several sources, UCLA athletic department officials feared that one or more members of last season’s men’s basketball team might test positive for marijuana if selected randomly during the NCAA’s normal round of postseason tournament testing.

The officials were worried enough that, days before the Bruins set off for the first round of the Midwest Regionals at Auburn Hills, Mich., a team doctor, Gerald Finerman, warned, in a closed-door meeting with the entire team, that anybody who might be using drugs had better stop immediately.

Marc Dellins, UCLA sports information director, when asked about that specific gathering, said, “We have different personnel routinely talk to the different teams about nutrition, or ticket policies, or NCAA compliance rules.”

Sources, however, characterized that meeting as much more than the standard cautionary speech.

The school administrators knew that, unlike Hejduk, any prominent Bruin basketball player could not simply disappear from the tournament--and from the team for a year--in silence. Big headlines, national reports, and major embarrassment would follow.

In basketball, the NCAA picks certain rounds of the tournament to test all teams, and uses a computer to randomly select four players from each team for testing. A source said that UCLA’s medical officials were told that every team would be tested after the first round.

On March 13, sources say that UCLA officials held their collective breath, awaiting word on who would be picked to be tested after the Bruins’ 109-75 victory over Charleston Southern. The same sources said athletic department officials were immensely relieved when they saw the four who were taken away after the game to provide urine samples. The source named Bob Myers, Brandon Loyd and walk-on Harold Sylvester, and said that the fourth player, whose name was not provided, was also believed to be a walk-on.

All four were clean, and UCLA was not drug-tested again in the tournament. The team lost to Minnesota, 80-72, in the Midwest Regional final. The Bruins had dodged the bullet.

But both the Hejduk incident and the basketball incident underscore potential trouble spots for the school and its student-athletes--both in maintaining the integrity of its own drug-testing policy and in keeping players clean for NCAA tests.

Revision With a Loophole

According to Frank Uryasz, NCAA director of sports sciences, 83% of member schools have instituted a drug policy.

UCLA toughened and tightened its own policy--which it has had since the 1984-85 school year and which mandates yearly, random testing of all student-athletes--just a few months after the 1997 NCAA basketball tournament. Sources say the revision was not necessarily a product of those concerns.

“It came to me as a recommendation from some members of the department who felt that we ought to rethink the drug-testing policy,” said Peter T. Dalis, UCLA’s athletic director. “It had been years since we did it.

“Coaches had said things, and student-athletes . . . so I got a group together to review it. That’s basically what it was.”

Said Steve Salm, associate athletic director: “A lot of people had concerns with the way the old policy was written, they thought it was too liberal. They thought an environment that wiped the slate clean every year was not appropriate for UCLA.”

But even after that revision, a Times survey shows that the punishment phase of UCLA’s drug policy remains among the more lenient in the Pacific 10 Conference.

Also, some important areas in the policy appear to be unresolved, potentially ineffectual and open to differing interpretations, even among top school administrators.

“The whole inception of the drug-testing policy is not to penalize anyone,” Dalis said. “It was basically for a problem to be identified and then to seek remedies and therapies for those problems--that’s basically what that was about. . . .

“I think the outcomes are the same for both policies. The outcomes were not to penalize student-athletes. The outcomes were to get people into situations where they can attempt to solve the problem.”

The main revision suggested by the committee--which was chaired by Salm--and implemented by Dalis, had been suggested by several coaches: a major strengthening of the three-strikes policy.

Under the old rules, a player had to test positive three times in one school year to be suspended. Once a new school year began, the slate was wiped clean and the player would need three more positives the next year to get suspended.

Under the new policy, positive drug tests are never wiped away--three positive tests over the course of a student-athlete’s career would result in suspension.

“We just toughened it up a bit,” said Finerman, UCLA’s head team physician.

But, for players who tested positive under the old system, and remain at the school now under the new system, there is a loophole: How do you evaluate positive tests incurred in the old system for current players? Did they, or did they not, start this season with a clean slate?

Finerman and Dalis gave conflicting answers.

Finerman, a member of the drug-policy review committee that revised it, said he thought that past positives were not erased when the new policy went into effect last July.

“It’s my understanding there will be a carry-over,” he said.

Dalis said that old positives do not remain on the record of current student-athletes.

“From my understanding, it was a brand-new policy, so that started the clock again,” he said. “That’s my understanding.”

Said Salm: “They’re both right. One or two positive drug tests under the old policy would not carry over. But three positives could carry over. It depends on the conditions that were given for the athlete’s reinstatement.”

Canvassing the Conference

The Times surveyed the other nine schools in the Pac-10 and found that four other schools randomly test their players; four test only if there is “reasonable suspicion” or “probable cause,” and one, Stanford, has no drug-testing at all.

Among those conference schools that test randomly, all four mandate harsher stances on second or third positive tests than UCLA.

The Bruin policy says that:

* Upon a first positive, only the team doctor is told of the results and mandatory counseling and future testing is required;

* Upon a second positive, the doctor, head coach and associate athletic director are notified. Three mandatory counseling sessions are required, as well as participation in future testing;

* Upon a third positive, the doctor, head coach and associate athletic director are notified, suspension from the next scheduled contest takes place, and three mandatory counseling sessions are ordered, as is participation in future testing. The athlete’s scholarship “may not be renewed” for the next academic year;

* Upon a fourth positive, the doctor, head coach, associate athletic director and director of athletics are notified and immediate suspension from participation in athletics is ordered. In addition, the athlete’s scholarship “will not be renewed” for the next school year and it may also be terminated at the end of the quarter.

Policies at other schools doing random testing vary as follows:

* At USC, according to Tim Tessalone, sports information director, a student-athlete who tests positive twice is suspended for a week’s practice and one game. A player testing positive three times in a career will be suspended for the rest of the academic year and the player’s scholarship will not be renewed.

* At California, a player testing positive twice in his career will be suspended for a “minimum of two weeks,” according to the policy, which also mandates a random yearly test of at least 20% of the student-athlete population.

* At Arizona, a second positive test during a career results in “dismissal from the team immediately,” and the halting of financial aid at the end of the semester involved. The student-athlete must wait at least a year before reapplying for reinstatement--and for his or her scholarship.

* At Arizona State, the policy directs that after a third positive, a player be suspended for “one calendar year and subjected to loss of financial aid for the rest of the semester.”

The policies at Washington and Washington State--where state law prohibits random testing by either school--and at Oregon and Oregon State take a different tack. At these schools, the mandate generally calls for testing of individual student-athletes only if there is cause to do so. Once positives are found under this system, the penalties become severe.

The breakdown on these schools is:

* At Washington, a second positive results in a seven-day suspension. A third mandates at least a month suspension. A fourth brings indefinite suspension.

* At Washington State, a second positive is a one-year suspension.

* At Oregon State, upon a second positive test, the player “may be expelled” from the team, and “may lose” his or her grant-in-aid. A third positive results in the student-athlete being “automatically expelled” from the team.

* At Oregon, there are no “hard and fast criteria” for suspension, though testing does occur, according to Dave Williford, sports information director.

* At Stanford, there is a history of individual court fights against NCAA drug-testing policies. The school has no drug-testing policy, and has no plans to institute one, according to Susan Burk, athletic affairs coordinator at the school.

The NCAA Policy

For financial and logistical reasons, the NCAA mainly tests players at postseason and championship events. It does some random testing of football and soccer players for performance-enhancing drugs during the school year.

For instance, during the unannounced tests in the basketball tournament, the NCAA selects four players randomly from each team’s roster to test.

When the NCAA initiated its drug-testing policy in 1987, all five starters plus two other randomly selected players were tested. Since then, the NCAA has changed the procedure, testing only four players randomly, regardless of playing status or position.

According to NCAA regulations, if a player in any sport tests positive during a postseason test, the student-athlete “shall be charged with the loss of a minimum of one season of competition in all sports. . . .”

Athletic departments are not required by the NCAA to have a specific drug policy, but they are required to adhere to whatever their policy is, according to Uryasz, the NCAA director of sports sciences.

Uryasz said that a school faces possible NCAA sanctions only if it knowingly allows an athlete to violate school policy.

A player testing positive in an NCAA test, however, has no second chance--one positive test means that player is suspended for the rest of the postseason, plus the next season. He or she also forfeits that year of eligibility (no red-shirting). A player such as Hejduk, who tests positive at the end of a junior year, automatically loses the fourth and final year of eligibility.

The seriousness of the NCAA penalty is balanced by the relatively small percentage of athletes who actually are tested, since most of the testing is done in the postseason, Uryasz said.

“Drug testing is mainly a deterrent,” Uryasz said. “You have to get into the head of a potential user. The athletes know their chances of being tested by the NCAA are slim, but we wanted them to know that if they did test positive, the penalties are huge.”

In addition, Uryasz said that the NCAA believes that a year’s suspension is a fair punishment for athletes who test positive for steroids, stimulants or any other kind of performance-enhancing drug.

“If an athlete is taking that stuff, the sporting world views it as cheating,” he said.

The NCAA puts its highest priority on catching performance-enhancing drugs, Uryasz said.

“Only about 1% to 2% of the athletes tested [are] positive,” he said. “Of that small percentage, the majority of positives are men and of those, most test positive for anabolic steroids. The next highest is marijuana.”

The NCAA tests for other “street drugs” such as heroin, but Uryasz said that a positive test for heroin has never been detected.

Uryasz said that the NCAA strongly recommends its member schools establish drug-testing programs.

“It helps athletes and schools avoid serious problems down the road,” Uryasz said. “It’s an early-warning system. It’s better to catch a problem early, before athletes can do terrible damage to their bodies. Also, many times the athletes with a substance-abuse problem are the ones getting into trouble off campus. The programs really help protect the athlete.”

The UCLA Policy

UCLA established its drug-testing program 10 years ago. Finerman headed the committee overseeing its installation.

“The student representatives wanted to keep their sports clean,” said Finerman, who has worked for UCLA since 1971. “They also wanted us to find and treat athletes who might be in trouble. . . .

“Drug testing helps; we have very few positive tests here.”

All student-athletes are tested randomly by the school, according to the policy. A player may be tested more regularly if he or she has given the school “probable cause,” such as a previous positive test.

The oversight committee, Finerman said, meets two or three times a year to review the drug-testing program and also meets to consider potential courses of action for specific cases, if the player involved seeks it after any positive test.

That committee is chaired by Salm, and the initial hearing, according to the policy, must take place within five days of a positive test result.

At this initial stage of appeal, the student-athlete can present mitigating evidence on his own behalf, Finerman said, adding it is possible that there could be two meetings before a decision is made.

“We consider a number of factors before making a decision,” Finerman said. “But a fourth positive test means the athlete will most likely be suspended.”

Although the committee works closely with the athletic department, Finerman said, it answers only to UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale.

At the last stage of appeal for a player facing punishment, the UCLA policy sets no timetable.

If the player loses the first appeal, he or she may seek a final hearing before a committee specifically appointed by the athletic director to hear the case. But the policy does not detail a time frame for when a final decision must be made, so there is nothing preventing a case to linger indefinitely.