Greene County High School head wrestling coach Mark Sawhill called Raccoon Valley Radio Thursday afternoon with two words no coach, wrestler, or fan, wants to hear–skin disease. As a result the Rams will not go to the North Polk Tournament in Alleman tonight, and won’t have practice or contact of any kind for the rest of this week. That includes not going to the Junior Varsity tournament in Ogden this Saturday. The plan is for practice to resume on Monday, Jan. 8. If all goes well, the Rams will host PCM (Monroe) and South Hamilton (Jewell) in the middle school gym in Jefferson on Thursday, Jan. 11 for Senior Night and the final home action of the season.

The coach said he can’t be exact about the cause of the malady, but he remembers a wrestler from another school being allowed to participate in the first Saturday of December tournament the Rams were in, even though a highly visible and uncovered sore was on that wrestler’s forehead. What the coach is sure of, is that the skin disease did not originate with his team. He added that all mats are disinfected before and after every practice.

Coach Sawhill said two Greene County wrestlers developed a skin disease shortly after that first tournament. He added four more came down with it between Tuesday and Thursday of this week.