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After a routine track meet at the University of New Hampshire, a large group of the University of Maine track and field team suffered a vicious stomach ailment, with multiple members carted away in a University Volunteer Ambulance Core ambulance.
“It was the most violent sickness I’ve ever had in my entire life,” UMaine track and field distance runner MaryBeth Kelson said.
Although the cause of the sickness is still unknown, a number of players believe it was from the food they ate after the meet, from a Portsmouth, N.H. sandwich shop called Googies.
“First of all, it’s not confirmed as a food poisoning,” athletic trainer Richard Young said. “We had the track and field team travel to New Hampshire for a meet, and came back to campus; and within 6 to 10 hours there were some reports of random team members coming up with issues.”
The owner of the shop, Ryan Cronen, blamed the sickness not on his restaurant, but on a severe stomach virus affecting Southern Maine and New Hampshire.
“We can confirm that it’s not food poisoning,” Cronen said. “I’ve talked to all my deli staff and we haven’t had any other reports of any other customers of ours getting food poisoning.
“[UNH track and field] coach Jim Boulanger said there’s a pretty rampant stomach virus running around this area. A couple of his team members had it last week and suffered from a 24-hour stomach bug,” he said.
Kelson, a third-year nursing student, disagreed.
“I think it’s entirely from the food,” she said. “I don’t think a stomach bug would cause that much upset. Every single one of us experienced the same symptoms. With a stomach bug, maybe you can fight it off but there was no fighting this, everyone got sick at the same time. No one else we made contact with got sick.”
“I was stricken with it myself,” UMaine assistant athletic trainer Sam Walton said. “[Googies] has delivered to us and we’ve never had a problem with them before. It started late Sunday night and Monday I was feeling the end of it. I knew I just had to ride it out and hydrate. Sunday I was up all night expelling stuff from my body — I think that’s how most people handled it.”
With the cause still unknown, Young said the school reported it to Maine’s disease control.
“We’re compelled to report that and we did,” Young said. “We’re working with them now to come to a resolution as to what we’re dealing with.”
Young said he didn’t realize the extent of the outbreak until the next day.
“The pieces to the puzzle hadn’t been put together yet so we really didn’t know the extent of the people involved until some staff reported back to our central operations where we have a network to help us with health outbreaks,” he said.
