The University of Wisconsin-Stout announced Thursday that it will be requiring its athletes to submit to random drug testing. This decision comes in response to the drug-related arrests of two football players, Luke Steffen and Nicholas OrRico, last December. Steffen, a senior linebacker for UW-Stout, was found with three bottles of liquid steroids in his home, and OrRico, a junior linebacker, was found with one.
Although drug testing is nothing new for Division I athletics, it is not as common among Division III athletics. The NCAA policies for Division III require drug tests only of athletes who have qualified for championship competition.
Doug Mell, director of UW-Stout communications, said he feels confident in the school's new policy of random drug testing for athletes.
""It is going to have an incredibly strong deterrent effect,"" Mell said. ""We are going to make sure that any time an athlete competes at UW-Stout, he or she is going to be drug free. There is no question about that.""
When athletes are found with any sort of drugs in their systems, ""They are going to be gone—off the team,"" Mell said.
This system of random drug testing will be introduced at UW-Stout in the spring for the football team and will be implemented among other UW-Stout sports teams in the fall. UW-Madison has had random drug testing in its athletic departments for a long time, but whether UW-Stout's change in policy will have a domino effect on other Division III schools is yet to be determined, according to Mell.
Madison.com contributed to this report.
