Steroids in High School Sports: The Real-Life Story of Jim Williams

The one thing I took away from my first meeting with Jim Williams was his intensity. High strung and a bundle of uncontrolled energy, Jim Williams stood before me, a 17-year-old young man from one of the suburbs. He had been using anabolic steroids for over a year. I had no idea at the time, but I would soon come to be introduced to the extremes to which a young man would go to compete in competitive sports on the collegiate level. While the world focuses on Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, it is the stories of individuals such as Jim Williams that have people in Congress trying to curtail the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in sports.

Standing a solid, six foot-three and a rock-hard 265 pounds Jim Williams was the prototype college defensive lineman with above average speed and strength. He was being recruited by every school in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) as well as several schools in the Big Twelve Conference. He was a decent enough student to not have to worry about qualifying as an incoming freshman so all Jim had to worry about during his senior season was performing up to the expectations that made him a unanimous selection for All-Metro in Class 5A.

Since I only met Jim during the summer before his senior year of high school, I had no way of knowing the transformation he body had undergone between the end of his freshman year and the beginning of his senior year. Under normal conditions a young man who spends a good deal in the weight room can look to add fifteen to twenty pounds of muscle on his frame. Jim was different and people knew it. He had added on not just weight but muscle mass and was as chiseled as a seventeen year old guy can be. During the regular season, Jim Williams performed as expected, controlling the defensive line and stopping the running game of every opponent the school faced. He was a menace that reminded people of the steroid-using junkie from the hit sports film The Program. Which begs the question how no one knew that Jim was using steroids when his would tinker between depression and animalistic tendencies almost without control. He wasn't crazy. He was borderline psycho and now we know that it was roid rage that drove him to that point.

Jim had grown up as the object of other people's attention. His parents had expected him to succeed and his father constantly rode him to dominate on the football field. He was good enough to get a scholarship they told him. And Jim was willing to do whatever it took to see that happened. That decision led Jim to trying steroids the first time after a visit to a local sports club where a lot of weightlifters work out at. Before Jim knew it he was sticking himself in the rear, injecting the performance-enhancing drugs into his system for him to work out harder to run faster and to finish better than anyone he would compete against.

Inside a blue bag in the locked portion of his locker, Jim kept his stash of steroids. No one said anything because everyone knew what Jim was doing and if we had the money we would probably join him. Jim was not alone. We all wanted the benefits of steroids. We wanted the guarantee of improvements. Jim accomplished in one injection what other high school football players spent years in the weight room on, getting stronger. A wide receiver that was one of the top twenty most recruited football prospects in the state and widely regarded as the fastest sprinter in the city was doing the same thing at a neighboring high school. Ripped and light, Donnie Spade was lightning quick and difficult to tackle. Donnie was trying to go to Tennessee to join some of his former high school teammates who donned the orange and white on Saturday afternoons. In contrast to Jim, Donnie's steroid usage was a bit more pronounced. During the football season his weight hovered around one, eight-five while during the track season, he would drop down fifteen pounds or so.

In a time when so much attention is being cast on Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens it is stories like these, Jim Williams and Donnie Spade that should receive the most attention. Going into their senior seasons, you could not find two more sought after football players. How else do you explain coaches from around the southeast walking the halls of these two high schools to meet with these two young men?

All it took was a weekly treatment of performance-enhancing drugs.