Five Canadian university football players, including four from Saint Mary’s University alone, have tested positive for banned performance-enhancing substances. The players tested positive during two CFL combines in March, TSN has confirmed. The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport is expected to issue a release confirming the positive tests sometime Friday. The positive tests come a year after three other top CIS football players also tested positive at CFL combines. The positive tests mark another sobering chapter in a decades-long struggle by schools and sports leagues to contain steroid use by athletes who are looking for an edge. Steroids build muscle strength, add weight, and can help players recover faster from injuries, but also come with potentially life-threatening side effects. Steroid users can develop tumours and suffer other harmful side effects. A source told TSN the five players who tested positive two months ago have already written letters to their respective schools, Saint Mary’s and the University of Laval, taking responsibility for their positive drug tests. The positive drug test results were first reported by Justin Dunk, a columnist with 3 Down Nation, a website run by the Hamilton Spectator newspaper. Dunk reported Jonathan Langa, Marvin Golding, Kayin Marchand-Wright and Melvin Abankwah all play for Saint Mary’s while Matthew Norzil, the other player who tested positive, plays for the Laval Rouge et Or. Langa and Abankwah tested positive for methandienone, Dunk reported, while Langa also tested positive for stanozolol. Both stanozolol and methandienone are anabolic steroids. Norzil, Golding and Marchand-Wright tested positive for SARMS S-22, a drug that mimics the effect of steroids. In a letter obtained by Dunk that was reportedly sent to all nine CFL teams, Abankway wrote, “I take full responsibility for the methandienone found in my test and am aware of the consequences that this violation brings. I regret my decision to obtain supplements in which I was unaware of the ingredients and didn’t seek proper advice on this particular supplement.” It’s unclear how Saint Mary’s or Laval will respond to the scandal, which comes five years after a steroids scandal rocked a major school’s football program. In 2010, eight players at the University of Waterloo were suspended for anti-doping rules violations after testing or admitting to using steroids and three years later, a ninth player at the centre of the scandal was sentenced for possession of steroids for the purpose of trafficking, among other charges. Waterloo suspended its football program for a year. Dr. Colin Dodds, president of Saint Mary’s, couldn’t be reached to comment. Therese Quigley, the CIS’s president, told TSN that CIS schools with football programs have agreed to increase their own funding for drug testing to $5,000 a year, beginning with the 2015-16 school year, up from $2,000. Costs have climbed in recent years to $1,000 per test as public funding for testing has been frozen. Ira Jacobs, dean of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education and an expert on doping, has says the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports is being pressured by the federal government to focus efforts on students who participate in Olympic sports – at the cost of policing college athletes who play hockey and football. “It’s a wild west because we have no (effective doping) controls in place and the athletes know,” Jacobs told TSN in an interview last August. In January, Saint Mary’s said it suspended six members of its football teams for allegedly posting messages of hate, racism and sexual violence on Twitter. One of the tweets quoted by a website run by the school’s journalism program said: “to that bitch that bit me last night. Hope your dead in a ditch. you are scum.” David Gauthier, the university’s academic and research vice-president, said in a news release at the time that the tweets were not consistent with the school’s values, calling them “completely inappropriate and unacceptable.” http://www.tsn.ca/five-cis-football-players-test-positive-for-peds-1.278044