A High School Wrestler Got Herpes All Over His Face From The Mats And Oh Man I Feel For This Kid

ABC7 – A South Bay high school athlete says he got herpes from a wrestling mat. Now he wants a weekend tournament postponed to protect other students.

Blake Flovin says he was diagnosed with herpes gladiatorum, caused by the herpes virus.

He showed ABC7 News the outbreak of lesions on his face.

Flovin thinks he contracted the virus while wrestling at a tournament at Independence High School in San Jose last month.

He’s concerned he could have spread the infection to other wrestlers during recent practice sessions.

“Either they need to be stopped from wrestling or the state tournament needs to be postponed. Just trying to prevent this disease from getting to other people,” he says.

ROUGH luck for this kid. But at the same good on him for coming out and trying to get this stopped rather than letting there be an entire town full of meatheads running around with their faces covered in herp. Given how badly any little faux pas can lose you some standing in high school, I can’t imagine that was an easy call to reveal “My entire head is consumed by disease” publicly on local news to try to get the schools from fucking other kids over. So all the props to Blake and hopefully he figures it out.

If anything though, doesn’t this cement high school wrestling as the most disgusting sport around? Football locker rooms get nasty and I’m sure the mildew from water polo or swimming can get weird but wrestling seems way worse. They’re rolling around in sweaty thin spandex with other dudes, getting touched and their faces shoved all over, cutting weight in aggressive and disgusting ways, then you throw in some of the cauliflower ear things that can happen some times with a sprinkling of herpes…if I have a kid I think it’s a hard pass on high school wrestling. The guys who do it tend to be fun dudes, total wild cards and a bit homoerotic, but whatever character building isn’t worth being deformed by 17.

PS if only Blake knew better he’d have somehow found a way to wear a durag while wrestling to protect his precious forehead. Durags are the peak of high school athletic style, maybe the schools should have all wrestlers wear them: