Link: islandpacket.com | Close contact,close calls.
The scratch on David Hutton’s left shin was an inch long and innocuous — the kind of "injury" an offensive lineman might suffer dozens of times each season.
Nothing to think twice about.
Nothing to bring a 6-foot-8, 390-pound beemoth off the field for treatment.
Nothing, for that matter, to interrupt even a kid’s backyard game of freeze tag.
But during the bus ride home from Wando High School, Hutton noticed the mark left by an opposing player’s cleat had turned red and swollen. By the next morning, the sore was throbbing and hot.
Two days later, the Hilton Head High School offensive lineman was in a doctor’s office, getting pus scooped from the festering wound with a little, meal spoon.
"The doctor dug down about a half inch deep," Hutton winces. "It hurt so bad."
Groggy from the medication he took to stem the infection, Hutton spent the next week trying to stay awake during classes. He was held out of practice so as not to spread infection to his teammates, and when the Seahawks played West Ashley the next Friday, Hutton wasn’t in uniform, sidelined by a ubiquitous bacterium that has stricken several local athletes in recent seasons.
