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SHORE CONFERENCE WRESTLING TOURNAMENT
Skin infection causes CBA to withdraw from tourney

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 02/1/06
BY JOE ADELIZZI
STAFF WRITER

Christian Brothers Academy became the second wrestling team selected to be in the Shore Conference Tournament that has withdrawn because of a skin infection.

The tournament will start today with 15 teams instead of 16, with Raritan, scheduled to wrestle CBA at Jackson, drawing a bye to the quarterfinals.

"I received a fax from CBA at 4:22 this afternoon," Kim DeGraw-Cole, the tournament director from Southern, said Tuesday.

She said the first thought was to perhaps move teams up, and pick another team to fill the final spot.

But the shuffle would have meant that Toms River East would have had to change sites.

The Raiders wrestled Tuesday night, which means that the four teams at Southern, where East wrestles tonight, would each get an additional one-pound weight allowance. The start of a new month also gives
wrestlers a two-pound allowance, thus a wrestler weighing in at 125 tonight at Southern can weigh as much as 128. At the other three sites, wrestlers must weigh 127.

"Sam Crosby (The NJSIAA rules interpreter) had ruled that the three teams wrestling with East would get the additional pound," DeGraw-Cole said.

"It wouldn't have been fair to Long Branch and the other schools to have their wrestlers go home thinking they had a three-pound allowance, and then find out they were only getting two pounds," she said.

CBA athletic director John Przygocki said the Colts team had a number of kids with an undefined skin condition.

"We were concerned about it spreading," Przygocki said. "Just on general principle you pass on wrestling a meet. You have an obligation to do that."

On Monday, Wall withdrew from the tournament because of a skin condition. Like CBA, the Knights' program will shut down for eight days, with only some noncontact conditioning.

"We do everything we can to avoid this," Przygocki said. "We shower, we make sure the kid leave their sneakers outside, we scrub the mats and we use all types of preventives. But there is no 100 percent guarantee that you can avoid these things."

Raritan coach Rob Nucci was disappointed his team wouldn't get a chance to wrestle CBA, a team they lost to last Saturday.

"Its almost like being seeded 16th," said Nucci, whose team was easily defeated by Jackson during the season.

Skin disorders wreaked havoc on the Shore Conference Tournament in 1992, when the event was canceled because of an outbreak of herpes gladiatorum, a contagious skin disorder.

Herpes gladiatorum is a Herpes Simplex I virus, which is usually found on the face and upper extremities. Herpes gladiatorum thrives on skin that is broken, wet and moist.

There has been no finding of Herpes Simplex at either CBA or Wall.

Shore Conference schools set guidelines and prevention standards after the 1992 outbreak.

"Each team needs clearance before they can wrestle in the tournament," DeGraw-Cole said. "We did ours here at Southern earlier this week. Every wrester must be cleared by a doctor or trainer."

Earlier in the day, NJSIAA assistant director Bob Baly ruled that wrestlers who had participated in the Coaches Invitational Meet last Sunday would be eligible to wrestle in all four matches if their team
made it to the SCT finals.

Last year Sean Quinn of Southern was forced to sit out a bout in the opening round. Monday Ken Hoff, the coach at Ocean, and DeGraw-Cole had different answers to the question of eligibility. Baly said there would be a waiver for this year.