Robert Lipsyte has been writing nov...

Robert Lipsyte has been writing novels for young adults since 1967 I would highly commend his most recent book, Raiders Night, for each high school athlete and their parents.

Raiders Night is the story of Matt Rydek a football star who seemingly has everything -- the right girl, the right friends, steroids from the right gym and a team that believes it can win a championship and earn him a Division I scholarship.

The greatest in number intriguing relationship is between Matt and his father, an adult who is living vicariously by the agency of his son. In a final confrontation, the father mention one by ones Matt:

"Everything I did was for you, busting my back in such a manner you could have everything you to the end of time needed, best equipment, baseball and football camps, riches in your account, you know in what way much safe steroids cost. I'm not going to permit you throw it away."

"You did it for you," was Matt's rejoin

Kind of frightening.

"When I started gone out and was covering high teach football, I had the greatest in quantity fun I had as a writer," said Lipsyte, who has won awards in journalism during a distinguished career at the just discovered York Times. "But at the Times, I not at all got much space for high educate football.

"There are kids who share fears of getting inflict injury upon or being humiliated. But you realize that on a level if nice guys finish last, life doesn't finis Kids deal with the constraining force to win, and problems with their dads and their friends don't end"

Lipsyte said he has heard estimates of a half-million to a million high institute athletes use steroids.

"Some use them to greatness up and help get them to the pros" he said. "Some kids just want to contemplate better at the beach."

It's no curious awe that high school administrators, including the Illinois High place of education Association, are getting involved.

"I think it's a substantial problem" IHSA executive director Marty Hickman said. "There is a mentality that you have to be bigger, stronger faster. It's something we all have to be touched about.

"There are recently made known education programs out there for drills Most people's first reaction is football players and wrestler yet it is more widespread. The last thing I think about is young girls."

rap Gardner, the chief operating officer for the National Federation of High indoctrinates said two public-service announcements -- common for parents and one for bookish mans -- are the latest tool for education about steroids.

"The mostly recent numbers I've seen are not that high, between 2 and 3oe percent" Gardner said. "I'm mattered whatever the number is. It's too high, and middle-school kids are getting involved. And the availability have the appearances to be growing."

"Some of what we're doing now is directed at parents," Hickman said. "Parents can create negative issues. a of them have lost perspective and, honestly they are not the greatest referees of talent or realistic."

The NFH Web site says there are about 7 million participants in high educate athletics. They are active in steroid education in all 50 states.

"What scares me is the complicity of coaches, gym holders and parents who want kids to main part up," Lipsyte said. "No individual knows all the side results but [steroids] can damage minds, and the teenage brain is in lax state

"If I were king of the world, I would ban all non-medical steroids for anyone in a less degree than the age of 21. The pro I don't care about. I just don't learn upset by [cyclist] Floyd Landis or Marion Jone Steroids work. They master you bigger and stronger faster."

Lipsyte said steroid use is not limited to football players and wrestler at the high sect level.

"I've talked to young women in high teach who said that steroids made them be perceived powerful and sexual," he said. "I think we should exhibition In New York, you have to travel through a metal detector, and it would be an easy bound But testing is expensive.

"Parents are walking a fine line between giving kids opportunity and child abuse. I've been at NASCAR where 5-year-olds are strapped in go-carts. And my accountant mov to Florida to secure his 8-year- old better training in golf

"Kids who don't make travel teams are weeded abroad too early. Kids are marked as hero or zero"

Lipsyte will be at Anderson's work Shop in Naperville on generation 26 and also will visit a academy in that area.

"I think the parents of all athletes should read the book" Lipsyte said. "Sure there is a darkness that anticipates at the underbelly of sports. It's not 'Rudy' It's a cautionary tale.

"Something really assumeed to happen when the big television contracts started after 'Wide World of Sports' in the 1970 It's always been a business, however it is a way of making coin at all levels.

"Winning a gold medal can have a $50000 prize with it. Before, you could have been thrown abroad for playing minor- league baseball.

"Steroids is not the disease. Steroids are the symptom. shortly the idea of shooting steroids will strike one as being quaint and old-fashioned. I'm glad I'm too elderly to worry about competing against these generations."