An email was sent out on November 25 by school administrators, informing families of cases of hand, foot, and mouth amongst the student body. The email reads “WAHS Families, We have some confirmed cases of hand, foot, and mouth disease in our school”. Hand, foot, and mouth is a common and contagious viral illness that can cause fever, sore throat, and rashes with blisters around the hand, foot, and mouth area.The disease can be transmitted via contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids like their saliva, mucus, or even touching contaminated surfaces like doorknobs. Although the talk of hand, foot, and mouth is not a new topic here at WAHS.
There are many sports that revolve around physical contact with their opponents, including wrestling. Wrestling also uses mats, which are more likely to breed viruses and bacteria than other surfaces; therefore the likelihood of a wrestler catching hand, foot, and mouth is higher than other indoor sports.
“We start by dressing down, and if you want to volunteer to clean the mats [you can], but it’s necessary, you have to clean the mats.” Said freshman JV wrestler Jayden Perez, when asked about his practice routine. “We go through everything, start drilling, running, we’re all sweaty. Mats are all dirty, and we clean them again. And then we just repeat that every single time”.
The cleaning process they have is a very routine system that they set up to ensure cleanliness. “We wear this disinfecting backpack with sprayers and we just go around[the mats] twice and we use a mop dish that gets changed every three days, and we just go through it and it just cleans [the mats]” said Perez.
Perez goes on to share why infection and disease might still spread despite the strict disinfecting routine.
“The mats are old, so they’re gonna absorb more of the bacteria, and since they’re old, no matter how you clean it, they’re still gonna get some type of bacteria, rash, red mark, itchiness, or whatever type of [symptom] comes out of that bacteria.”
There are many ways to help prevent the spread of a disease like hand, foot and mouth. The school makes showering immediately after practice mandatory for all wrestling participants. Perez helps prevent catching diseases by having good hygiene.
“Take a shower, obviously clean all the crevices, even your ears, behind your ears, in your eyes, your nostrils, every crevice you can find, because you don’t know where you can get bacteria,¨ Perez recommends
