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Here’s the thing about anabolic steroids. If they’re bad for guys, they must be really, really bad for girls.

And yet, if I were a teenager today, wouldn’t I be tempted?

I played in the “old days” when girls’ sports were a whisper and not a glory. We wore tunics for basketball, old wool things that made us sweat like linebackers. We played softball on a Little-League baseball field and I—a wicked pull hitter—routinely put the ball in the pond on the foul side of third base. (What…you think we actually had fences?) We played field hockey games on the football practice field, dodging rocks and kicking up dust. There were no accolades and no fan base (not even parents). Except for the gymnasts, who looked really good in their leotards, we all hid the fact that we were varsity athletes.

Title IX changed everything.

Title IX gave us Mia Hamm and Candace Parker and Jennie Finch. Women captured the attention of ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and People magazine. I was delighted to attend my daughter’s freshman field hockey game and discovered cute guys cheering them on. Maybe the girls still wore kilts…but they were darned fashionable kilts.

Post Title IX, female athletes have the respect, the fans, the national exposure, and the money. And now we’ve got the juice.

Boost was prompted by a national news report about middle-school and high-school girls admitted to steroid use. And here’s the ironic thing. We’re not talking bodybuilders or javelin throwers or sprinters. Girls popping anabolics seem to be more about having six-pack abs than in acquiring strength for sports.

As far as we have come, we are apparently still carrying the same-old crap.

Other reports indicate that, apart from anecdotal use, steroid use among girls is still a very small percentage of overall use. The bottom line is this: adults are still the biggest performance-enhancers a kid can be made to swallow. And I plead guilty of juicing up expectations.

Okay, so I didn’t hand out pills, nor would I. But I did stop at convenience stores on the way to tournaments so my players could buy Red Bull or Jolt. (Like they’d listen if I told them to buy O.J. instead?) I told parents that their girls needed to start pitching as nine-years-old if they wanted a D-1 scholarship. (Which is pretty much true.) I recruited figure skaters, basketball players, and soccer stars for my 10U team. (Because basketball scholarships were hard to come by. Softball was there for the taking.) I taught pitching on Super Bowl Sundays and expected kids to be there. (Gym time is expensive, after all.)

I hated spring soccer because it meant my best pitcher invariably showed up with a knee injury. (I ordered her never to play soccer on a wet field. You can imagine her soccer coach had other plans.) I ran after-school clinics and sent groups at a time to the locker room to make sure they got their homework done. (Which was the responsible thing to do.) I stole girls from Little-League baseball, trained them, then crowed to male coaches when they starred in Babe Ruth baseball. (And how is that anything but a marvelous thing?)

Yeah, I plead guilty to putting on the heat. If I was going to work that hard as a coach, I expected my players to do the same. But the noun is player, not worker.

So many ways for we adults to put on the heat. Chemicals. Extra practices. Tutors. Playing on multiple teams. Playing multiple sports in the same season. Changing school districts for the best team. Changing school districts to avoid competition at your position. Hiring nutritionists, personal trainers, physical therapists, and sports psychologists.

And yet, for all the clichés, most coaches and family-members are supportive and protective. I cheer for all work their tails off to provide opportunity and means for the girls. But just as the line between good and excellence is that last 0.5 percent, the line is very fine between support and oppression. If we adults don’t know where that line is, then we’d better back off. Way off.

End of lecture. Go play.

Kathy Mackel, Boost, Dial, Penguin Books