Daughter Courtlynn left for summer camp yesterday where she will finally get to be a councilor in the Muskokas of Ontario (that’s in Canada).

But every time she goes to camp, there’s an outbreak of something that makes me question what these guardians of our children know about food safety (no more or less than anyone else, I guess).

Indiana’s news leader, WSBT, reports that more than 100 middle and high school students participating in summer sports camps at the University of Notre Dame became suddenly ill early Wednesday morning. Some were so sick they had to be hospitalized.

The big question neither the St. Joseph County health officer nor the university could answer Wednesday was exactly what caused more than 100 teenagers to become ill with stomach flu-like symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and body aches?

Indiana’s Department of Health and the St. Joseph County Health Department are testing stool samples and food the campers ate to see whether the illnesses were caused by a nasty stomach bug or food poisoning.

It’s a summer camp 13-year-old Chicago friends Elaine Johnson and Maeve Sheehan will always remember.

“I just kind of woke up [in the middle of the night] and started to have a sick feeling,” Johnson said. “The coaches brought us out into the hallway and every single girl had a small trash can. And everybody had a little pillow and blanket there and we were all just kind of throwing up everywhere.”

Suddenly, several of their lacrosse camp friends were also getting sick.

“I don’t know, I was kind of scared a little. It was weird,” Sheehan recalled.
She began vomiting hours later.

“Everybody was puking last night,” added football camper Alex Bradt, from Chaffield, MN. Bradt did not become ill, but he noted his camp did not have enough players to create teams for a scheduled scrimmage Wednesday because so many of the teens were sick.

Here’s the video from Indiana’s other news leader, ABC57.