January 13, 2011

Tournament missed due to MRSA policy

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W restlers came back from an unexpected break Tuesday following a nearly week-long quarantine that caused postponement of a dual meet and meant foregoing a tournament after a bacterial infection was discovered at the high school.

Several sports events were initially postponed for 24 hours, including girls and boys basketball and even bowling, following the Jan. 4 discovery of a Granville Jr./Sr. High School student with methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

The student was a member of the wrestling team, and the potentially league title-deciding match scheduled Jan. 6 against Tamarac was moved to Jan. 20 as a result. The Golden Horde missed the Greg Rockaway tournament in Galway on Jan. 8, but the missed competition will not affect league or section standings in any way, according to school officials.

“We got a call from the (Todd Nelson, assistant director of the New York State Public High Schools Athletic Association), and they basically reviewed what we had done with us and they gave us good grades on what we had done,” Superintendent Mark Bessen said.

After Granville and many other schools across the state dealt with a MRSA outbreak in 2007, Bessen said, policies were put into place by state athletics to safeguard students that included the quarantine from practice or competition.

“They recommended we conduct a screening prior to them reengaging in any athletic competition,” Bessen said.

All of the wrestlers will be evaluated for MRSA risk before they are allowed to return to practice. Bessen said the students can go see school physician Dr. Carl Beckler for the screening at no cost, or check in with their own physician. Weather forecasts caused further delay, but the tournament would still have been missed.

“We were going to have something Saturday, just to get everybody checked out, but now we can’t because of the storm,” Bessen said.

“We’ll have the wrestling program back up and running on Monday but they all have to go to doctor before they can go back on the mat,” Bessen said.