Ben Barrone had never been in a more awkward situation.
Less than an hour after Winona State University’s baseball team was defeated by Central Missouri State in the first round of the NCAA Division II Central Region Tournament, Barrone, a senior catcher for the Warriors, stood in a bathroom, his pants and underwear pulled down to his ankles, holding the bottom of his shirt above his navel with one hand and gripping an empty bottle with the other. An NCAA official stood in front of him, watching closely.
“It was very awkward; I felt like a 4-year-old,” Barrone said of the experience. “He literally stood two feet away from me. It’s very tough to go to the bathroom with someone staring at you.”
The official’s staring was to ensure that the urine sample Barrone provided hadn’t been tampered with, and that it was fit to be sent to a laboratory to be tested for steroids, masking agents, street drugs, ephedrine and other stimulants.
Barrone’s awkward situation has been shared by thousands of student-athletes since 1986, when the NCAA began its championship testing program. Barrone’s test came back negative, and WSU athletics director Larry Holstad said no WSU athlete has ever tested positive for a banned substance, but there’s been a plethora of others busted for cheating.
Of the 1,516 sutdent-athletes subjected to championship testing in 2004-05, the most recent year for which testing results have been released, and the year before the WSU men’s basketball team won the national title, 38 results came back positive. Two Division II men’s basketball players and two Division II football players tested positive for amphetamines. Five Division II football players tested positive for marijuana.
“Unfortunately, there are people out there who use types of stuff that may enhance performance, and what you’re looking for is an equal playing field,” Holstad said. “I can’t put an exact number on it, but we’ve been tested every year for the last five or six years.”
A positive drug test for a first-time offender will result in a one-year suspension from competition. A second positive test for anything other than a street drug (i.e., marijuana, cocaine) automatically forfeits an athlete’s remaining eligibility.
An athlete who fails to show up for testing, or an athlete who tampers with his or her sample, will be considered to have tested positive for the use of a substance other than a street drug.
According to the 2007-2008 NCAA Drug-Testing Program handbook, the NCAA may select athletes from Division I and Division II institutions competing in postseason events for drug testing “on the basis of playing time, positions, and/or an NCAA-approved random selection.”
It is unknown whether the baseball players at last season’s regional were selected randomly or subjectively, but the fact that Barrone was one of six WSU players ushered into a van immediately after their 7-2 loss and taken to Central Missouri State’s athletic complex for testing led some to assume the latter.
Barrone set a WSU single-season record and led all NCAA Division II players with 27 home runs en route to being named the national player of the year by Rawlings/ABCA and being drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the 44th round of the Major League Baseball first-year player draft.
“Why wouldn’t you pick the player of the year — a guy who hits home runs like they’re going out of style?” WSU pitcher Donny Erdall said. “What a good story to see a guy who’s clean and can do that naturally.”
In an era in which suspensions for and allegations of performance-enhancing drug use have dominated headlines in the world of professional sports, gaudy numbers and record-breaking performances are never far from being rained on by a cloud of suspicion, even for college athletes.
“(WSU coach Kyle) Poock said he was talking to some guys when he went down to the (College) World Series who were like, ‘Well, did your big power hitter get tested? He might have been taking steroids,’” Barrone said, “but Polk said, ‘No, he got tested, and he was negative.’”
Barrone said he thinks the impressive numbers he put up last season have been authenticated by his negative drug test. And, like every WSU athlete asked about the topic, Barrone said drug testing should be administered to college athletes, even saying he would’ve preferred to encounter the awkward bathroom situation much earlier in the season.“They should test, but I don’t think they should wait until you get to the regional; I think they should do it before,” Barrone said. “Why let guys take it all year and then test after the regional when the season’s over?”
However, according to Mary Wilfert, NCAA assistant director of education outreach, the NCAA has been conducting year-round, on-campus testing focused on steroids and masking agents since 1990.
“Year-round testing was targeted at Division I and Division II football, and Division I men’s and women’s track and field,” Wilfert said. “In 2002, the NCAA added ephedrine testing to the year-round testing program. In 2004, the NCAA began testing year-round in all Division I and Division II sports.”
In the year-round program, all Division II football teams are tested at least once each academic year. In addition to the 12 football players, four athletes from one additional sport are randomly selected for drug testing.
In 2006, a summer testing program was added in which 5-10 athletes from a sport randomly selected are tested. For athletes who are away from school, an NCAA official will come to his or her location.
“(Summer testing) began as a next step in the effort to deter performance-enhancing drug use, and with a recognition that, as sport was becoming a year-round event, the use of these substances during summer conditioning and/or training could unfairly enhance performance,” Wilfert said.
Wilfert said that approximately 10,500 student-athletes in the year-round program and about 2,000 in the championship program were tested last year. Results have not yet been made public.
“What they basically do is contact the school and say, ‘You’re going to be drug-tested in this sport at this particular time,’” Holstad said. “At that time, we send them an active roster of the participants we have and they select names from the roster.
“They come in to test the student-athletes who have been selected, and they give us a report back that explains the results of the testing.”
Institutions are notified no earlier than two days before the test day, and the athletes are notified the day before.
WSU athletes appear to be very aware of how the system works.
“Every year before practice we sit down and the sports office gives us a rundown of what we’re subject to,” WSU senior wide receiver Scott Peters said. “They also give us a list of substances that are banned. They’re very particular about it, and we’re very aware of what we’re all subject to.”
The NCAA warns that many over-the-counter nutritional and dietary supplements contain banned substances, which is why Peters avoids them.
“It’s a long list, and I’ve never taken any supplements because there are so many banned substances out there that I’ve never wanted to risk it,” he said. “I know other guys on the team who use the normal stuff like Creatine and go into GNC, grab the stuff, go down the list and check each one off to make sure there isn’t one on (the label).
“The guys are really careful of what they take. At times you hear professional athletes going, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that was in there,’ and half the time I believe them.”
Peters said the WSU football team was tested in the spring but have not yet been tested this academic year.
Of the 10,094 athletes tested in the year-round program in 2004-2005, 49 tested positive for steroids — up three from the previous year but still a dramatic decrease from the 80 positives in 2002-2003. One athlete tested positive for ephedrine, 17 received one-year suspensions for failing to show, and there was one protocol violation. Street drugs are not tested for in the year-round system.
“I believe it’s a very good thing to have in place, and I believe that any athlete who uses steroids is cheating,” WSU senior linebacker and preseason All-American Marcus LaBadie said. “The majority of athletes in college are not on steroids, and they work their tails off to be successful.
“The athletes on steroids are taking the easy road and will not benefit from taking them in the long run. It also takes the integrity out of the game.”
Many institutions are taking the initiative in order to keep the integrity of the game intact.
Before transferring to WSU and helping the men’s basketball team to consecutive national championship appearances, senior guard Jonte’ Flowers was subject to testing as a football player at the University of Wisconsin. However, the testing wasn’t done by the NCAA.
“In my first year in college, when I was at Madison, I actually got tested a couple of times by the school,” Flowers said. “They did a bunch of random drug tests.”
According to an NCAA survey, 91 percent of Division I institutions had their own drug testing programs in 2005. Fifty-one percent of Division II schools had an independent system. WSU does not administer tests to its athletes.
Although Flowers wasn’t selected to be tested, he said members of the basketball team were tested each year the Warriors made the trip to the Elite Eight. He also said that the testing he was subjected to at Wisconsin was nowhere near as embarrassing as what Barrone went through.
“It wasn’t to that extreme,” Flowers said. “They do go in the bathroom and check everything to make sure there’s nothing in there, but there’s nobody there watching you; they give you a little privacy.”
But for the WSU athletes interviewed on the topic, all agreed that the awkwardness and embarrassment that comes with NCAA drug testing is tolerable as long as it guarantees no athlete will have an artificial advantage over another.
“It’s embarrassing but necessary if people are going to cheat,” Erdall said. “The good thing is that none of our guys had anything to hide; they sucked it up and did it.”

Reach Matt at MMHuss1550@winona.edu