Youth Sports: Dirty little secret

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Youth football players in Utah - some just

weigh-in. Their crash diet methods are crude, dangerous and potentially life-threatening.

In short

Nearly 20,000 boys, and a few girls, between ages 8 to15 play organized youth football in the state of Utah, and experts say approximately 25 percent purposely lose weight before their seasons start to gain some sort of a competitive advantage.

The Tribune investigated this practice, interviewing dozens of youngsters and 20 parents of players, along with several national experts in pediatrics, youth football and dieting. Many parents and league officials provided details about what some say is a closely guarded secret, but asked to remain anonymous, fearing backlash from their leagues and communities.

Health care professionals worry that crash dieting among kids - once primarily a problem only in wrestling - is even more dangerous in football because of summer heat. It is also leads to other problems, they say, such as steroid and drug abuse, bulimia and anorexia.

They raid their mothers' medicine cabinets for prescription diuretics, make homemade sweatsuits out of plastic garbage bags and spend hours in saunas and steam rooms at their local gym. Sometimes they force themselves to vomit. One young boy said an apple a day is all he ate for seven straight days. n It is known as "cutting weight" or "sweating down." n And they do it all for football. n Organized youth football, actually, the kind played by nearly 20,000 boys, and some girls, throughout Utah in leagues called the Ute Conference, the Wasatch Front Football League and the National Youth Football League-Utah. n Several prominent national health experts have another name for it: child abuse. n "If they keep this up," said Ron Thompson, a psychologist with the Center for Counseling and Human Development in Bloomington, Ind., "someone out there is going to die."

Here's youth football's dirty little secret: Hundreds of boys in Utah between the ages of 8 and 15 purposely lose weight every August, some in a short period of time, and some as much as 20 pounds, either to compete in a lower age division or avoid being a lineman only, a monthlong Salt Lake Tribune investigation found.

More than one interested parent says the win-at-all-cost mentality that has plagued professional, college and high school sports is now rearing its head in pee-wee football as parents and coaches push youngsters to trim down - then regain the weight later - for a competitive advantage.

"Some kids, the last few days, they do some unbelievable things to lose the weight," said Barry Bright, the father of a 12-year-old player in South Jordan. "The biggest day of the year for every [youth] football program isn't the last day or the championship day. It's the weigh-in day."

T.J. McRae, a 13-year-old running back and linebacker in the Ute Conference's Bingham district, and Rick Coles, an 11-year-old defensive end who plays for Alta, know all about that. Both have told The Tribune, with their parents' consent, that they lost a significant amount of weight in the sweltering August days leading up to their respective weigh-ins.

And they are not alone.

"Nobody wants to talk about it. But it is clearly out of control," said South Jordan's Rex Petersen, the father of a Bingham 12-year-old. "And it is happening everywhere. We are sending the message that it is OK to alter your body to get an advantage. No wonder steroid abuse is getting so prevalent. The pro athletes learned it when they were young."

Pediatricians, child psychologists, athletic trainers, high school coaches and even some youth football officials warn that the practice is dangerous, especially for young boys, and could be fatal if the right circumstances converge. Still, it continues to happen.

And it occurs in Utah more than anywhere else, national youth football experts say, because the largest league in the state only weighs its players once - at the beginning of the season.

"It's kind of part of the little league football culture here," said Kearns High coach Doug Bills, president of the Utah Football Coaches Association. "As a coaches association we don't encourage kids to lose weight at all. We are always telling kids that [success] at the little league level does not mean success at the high school level. There's no correlation at all."

No football player is known to have died in Utah from sudden weight loss, but an 8-year-old youth football player in the Midwest died last year while trying to lose weight to qualify for the 135-pound limit, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research. Over a two-hour time period, the boy jogged, sat in a sauna and then walked on a treadmill before collapsing. Cause of death was listed as heatstroke.

HAPPENING EVERYWHERE

Ute Conference commissioner Gary Matsuura, who oversees 29 districts (leagues) in Salt Lake, Davis, Tooele and Summit counties and has been commissioner for 11 years, said the conference does not condone any kind of forced weight loss for the nearly 8,000 youngsters in the program. He said he believes fewer than 10 percent of the conference's players lose weight beyond the normal weight loss that comes from practicing and sweating in the August heat.

"It happens, but I don't think it is rampant," he said. "We do everything we can to prevent it, but you can't stop parents from doing what they want to do. It's their child. They just say, 'I paid my money, I can do what I want.' "

Matsuura said the conference issues a strict warning every summer to parents and coaches about weight loss, but has no mechanism in place to enforce it. He said the conference reprimanded a coach four years ago and another coach this year "because one boy in particular didn't look [well] at the weigh-ins."

But at least two dozen people told The Tribune the conference does not do enough to stop rapid weight loss and likes to boast that its teams routinely dominate games against teams from other states in postseason Las Vegas tournaments over the Thanksgiving break. "No one wants to play Utah [teams]," said a Nevada tournament official who asked to remain anonymous. "They are always better than they look."

Rex Fivas, who oversees some 400 players in the Ute Conference's Copper Hills (West Jordan) district, says the commissioner is misled if he believes only 10 percent are doing it.

"It is happening everywhere," Fivas said. "Once the weigh-in is over, the kids put the weight back on. The proof is in what the kid weighs now. But if a dad sweats his kid down, there's not much I can do. . . . My guess is that 40 percent of kids in Ute Conference football lose weight [on purpose] for one reason or another. I've heard of kids losing 15, 16 pounds."

Why do they do it?

"So they can kick butt," said Fivas. "That year of maturity makes a big difference."

Bills and a half-dozen other Utah prep football coaches estimate 15 to 20 percent of boys who have played Ute Conference football have purposely lost weight at one time or another, and several coaches say some boys have done it every year they have played.

Neither T.J., 13, nor Rick, 11, are dominant players. But both are stars, and T.J., at least, is already on the radar of the football coach at Bingham High, his father believes. Parents say prep coaches form opinions on players long before they ever reach high school age, a notion that Kearns' Bills adamantly refutes.

"The thought that parents think a kid will be the same in high school as he was when he was 10 is beyond belief," Bills said.

Another district president, Brighton's Raymond Zealit, said his league had a "bigger" problem with kids losing weight in the 1990s, but believes it has not happened as often the past three years as participation has dwindled in his area.

Kids are unnecessarily losing weight to gain a competitive advantage in "my league and every league in the conference," he said, noting that there is no way to legally stop it, or prove it.

''A lot of that stuff is kept secret," he said. "Parents don't like to admit that they are doing it. But there are always some kids who don't look right at weigh-ins . . . there are hundreds of stories out there about things kids have done to lose weight. Some of them are probably true."

Meanwhile, Russell Lane, president of the Ute Conference's Riverton district, the state's largest with nearly 600 players, noted the rules work well if they are used properly. He said some boys who are small for their age would not play football at all if not for the Z-down rule.

THE WEIGHT-ING GAME

T.J. is what the conference calls a "Z-down player," an "older-but-lighter" boy who is allowed to compete in a lower age division because he was under a certain weight. In T.J.'s case, he was able to get in under 100 pounds, so he plays with and against 12-year-olds in the Midget division, rather than in the Bantams division of mostly 13-year-olds.

T.J.'s father, Kip McRae, of South Jordan, says his son lost 8 pounds, or 7.4 percent of his body weight, in the three weeks leading up to the weigh-in. Kip McRae said his son now weighs about 115 pounds.

"My boy Z's down because he enjoys the coach that's down there and feels like he has a lot of opportunity there," McRae said. "It's not like he dieted all summer, like some kids do. Three days before weigh-ins he started eating just salads and losing water. He happens to have the metabolism to be able to do it. . . . If a kid doesn't have any weight to lose, it's different. Then it is unhealthy."

McRae insists his son was never in danger.

"He didn't need an IV, like some people have said," McRae said. "We just took him to Village Inn and fed him some breakfast and he was fine."

The McRaes and the Coleses are the only parents out of 20 interviewed by The Salt Lake Tribune who would acknowledge publicly their son lost more than a few pounds to either Z-down or avoid having to wear an X on his helmet. The rest acknowledged that fact privately.

John Nichols, a physician who also helps coach one of Bingham's Midget teams (not McRae's team), said he has been at the district's weigh-ins the past two years and "[I] have yet to see a boy requiring any medical treatment or medical intervention secondary to dehydration or any other medical issues related to weight loss."

T.J.'s coach, Karl Cloward, said T.J. got under 104 pounds for a wrestling tournament in June, "so that tells me it is not that big of a deal."

Cloward said that every year he goes before Bingham's board of directors to renew his coaching license and every year he is asked what he is going to do about kids losing weight.

"I say, 'It's a parental thing,' " he said. "I don't like it and I don't encourage it. But I can't tell the parents what they can and can't do."

Jim Meadows has been weighing players for the Ute Conference for nine years, and says "there are always some kids who look like they haven't eaten for a while." He said those who do weigh-ins have been instructed by the conference to report "anything that looks suspicious."

But David Marshall, medical director of the Sports Medicine Program at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, said warnings are not enough. The doctor said youth football should follow the lead of the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations, organizations that have recently implemented rules for wrestling weight loss that measure for body fat and prohibit wrestlers from competing if they fall below a certain percentage, usually around 5 percent.

THE X-FACTOR

Unlike the largest youth football organization in the country - Pop Warner Little Scholars - the Ute Conference, which does not belong to any national organization, does not have maximum weight limits. Everyone gets to play.

However, players in every Ute Conference division who are over a certain weight are known as X-men and are required to play on the line; they cannot carry the ball and must always line up in a three-point stance.

Alta's Coles did not want to do that.

So the 11-year-old watched what he ate while being monitored closely by his parents and ran in the July and August heat three times a day. He got under 100 pounds, which is the X weight in the Mighty Mites division.

"I ate lots and lots of pineapple. But I'm fine now," he said on Halloween night while trick-or-treating. "It was worth it."

Coles' mother, Brenda Coles, said a doctor during a physical earlier this year said T.J. could stand to lose a few pounds. She said T.J. did not do anything extraordinary to lose the weight.

But it all creates a vicious circle, some parents say.

McRae says his son Z's down partially because others lose weight to get the X off.

"The Bantam X-weight is 135 pounds," he said. "If a kid weighs 107 pounds, like T.J. did, that extra 28 pounds goes a long way. The 107-pound kid ends up going against a kid who is probably back up to 140 pounds or so. It's a mismatch."

The Ute Conference's Matsuura said the conference has more than 40 years of experience with its weight/age guidelines and is happy with them.

"The problem is not the weight loss," he said. "The problem is the parents. They don't realize this is just a sport. We're not grooming kids for college. That's not our role."

Bingham's Cloward said boys who want to get the X removed constitute 95 percent of the kids that lose weight in the Ute Conference. They do it because "everyone wants to carry the ball. You know, quarterbacks and running backs get the glory."

Russ Smith, who recently switched his 14-year-old son from a Ute Conference district to Juan Diego's program, said it is not a new problem.

"The real truth of it is kids in the Ute program have been losing weight to Z or X for as long as I can remember," he said. "I played when I was 13 and kids in my class did it all the time."

Reporter Jay Drew can be reached at drew@sltrib.com. To comment on this story, write to sportseditor@sltrib.com.