Recognizing that vacation time isn’t down time for student-athletes preparing for next season, the NCAA is planning to conduct drug testing during summer months beginning this year. The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports has authorized summer testing at Division I institutions, focusing this year on football and baseball.

"This has been coming for some time," said Mary Wilfert, NCAA associate director of education outreach and staff liaison to the competitive-safeguards committee. "We’ve previously been hesitant to test into the summer months, because of concerns about extending student-athletes’ participation in a sport beyond a traditional season and also logistical considerations.

"But the reality is that student-athletes don’t take the summer off," she said.

The National Center for Drug Free Sport, Inc., which conducts testing for the Association, will advise institutions in an April memorandum on how to prepare for the summer initiative.

Testing likely will include student-athletes who are not physically present on campuses, Wilfert said. As a result, testing may occur at homes, jobs or other locations, though the program will adhere in all other respects to the protocol used in the NCAA’s year-round testing program — including its chain of custody, confidentiality, penalty and appeal procedures. While the summer program will be limited in scope and its primary focus will be football and baseball, all Division I institutions are subject to inclusion and student-athletes from any Division I sport could be selected for testing, said Frank Uryasz, Drug Free Sport president.

Wilfert said NCAA legislation permits testing any time during the year, and added student-athletes are placed on notice by the drug-testing consent form that testing can occur any time between when they sign that form at the beginning of the academic year through August 31 of the following year.

She believes the move toward summer testing anticipates pressures that soon may come to bear on sports at all levels, including intercollegiate sports, as concerns build in Congress and elsewhere over the effectiveness of drug testing by organizations that govern or sponsor competition.

Summer site coordinators basically will have the same responsibilities as campus personnel who coordinate drug testing during the academic year, including working with the compliance office to maintain up-to-date squad lists, said Andrea Wickerham, Drug Free Sport’s NCAA drug-testing program director.

“The biggest difference will be keeping summer contact information for all student-athletes in all sports,” Wickerham said. “They’ll need to know, if student-athletes are on campus, then where are they — reachable by cell phone, or in a residence hall? For those kids who are gone for the summer, where are they?” Drug Free Sport will work through coordinators to select and notify student-athletes and conduct testing within a 48-hour period.