On Sept. 26, Hillsdale College athletes received an email from athletic trainer Lynne Neukom.
“We have had three cases of staph this week in our athletes. As so, all locker rooms, the weight/cardio room and the athletic training room will be bombed tonight. If your athletes have any food items, please ask them to remove them. If you have any questions, please let me know…”
Staph had struck the Chargers.
But when this Staphylococcus-spawned skin infection first appeared, the college was ready.
“Staph is one of the most common infections we see as a health profession,” said Athletic Training Program Director Lynne Neukom.
Brock Lutz, director of health services, agreed.
“The staph is more widespread than it has been in incidences that I’m aware of, but that’s not odd. Staph is fairly common,” Lutz said. “It’s on our skin all the time, but most of us don’t notice.”
An untended lesion on the skin usually provides the means of entry.
A pre-existing response unit also complemented past experiences with the bothersome bacteria.
“We’re part of the team: Don Brubacher, Rich Péwé, Dean Philipp, to really talk about what’s going on,” said Lutz. “It’s very similar to what we did last year with chicken pox.”
As soon as this team learned what had happened, it acted to limit the spread.
“We have to do a kind of double cleaning, do above and beyond what we can to best prevent what’s going on,” Lutz said.
Neukom, who deals regularly with sick and injured athletes, also helped execute this strategy.
“When something like this happens, we do extra cleaning to make sure we get everything, anything that’s contagious in nature,” Neukom said.
That includes “fogging”–enclosing an area and then filling it with a vaporous disinfectant–potentially contaminated areas like the weight room, training room, and locker rooms. The whirlpools, popular among athletes for ice baths, were also closed during the peak risk of infection, through originally for technical issues.
These cleaning procedures have, for the most part, successfully contained the contagion.
“Anything like this is a collaboration between health services, the deans, and housekeeping. It was that collaboration that limited things to where they were,” he said. “It got taken care of and it was limited.”
In fact, Neukom said Hillsdale actually gets less staph infections than other schools, partly because wrestling is not a sport at the college.
As the nature of college and athletic life facilitate the spread of disease, most of the procedures undertaken to stymie such sickness are cleaning rigamarole, Neukom said.
“Unfortunately, in the athletic environment, athletes sweat a lot, and you can’t help that,” she said. “But typically, we do all of this cleaning but you don’t know we do. That’s the beauty of it.”
“Whenever you get 2,000 people living together, you’re going to get things spreading,” Lutz said.
In addition to these cleaning procedures, Neukom and Lutz both urged personal responsibility and basic hygiene–showering daily, not sharing clothes, washing hands, etc–as the best way to limit the spread of this and any disease in the future.
“The most important thing with staph is personal responsibility, and that’s what we preach,” Neukom said. “Don’t think: ‘Oh, I’m worried, think: Oh, this is a good reminder to get it checked out.”
Even these simple steps could make a big difference, Lutz said.
“If people did that, this would go away,” he said.
Indeed, Neukom said staph is far from her biggest concern.
“I’m more worried about influenza,” she said.
