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GREENSBORO — The principal at Southeast Guilford High School defended his longtime wrestling coach Tuesday, saying school officials looked into complaints lodged by parents earlier this year and found no wrongdoing.

Ralph Kitley said he and athletics director Scott Smith spent weeks, starting in December, interviewing players, parents and coaches after charges by other parents of student-athletes that wrestling coach Jim Cox pushed wrestlers to work out after they had been told they had a staph infection.

The same parents also complained that school officials did not announce the infections to the wrestling team and the rest of the school.

Kitley said his investigation found that infected wrestlers were told to work out in the wrestling room but apart from their teammates.

"There was no physical contact between any infected wrestlers and the rest of the team," Kitley said. "To the best of my knowledge, the (infected) wrestlers were not near the mat.

"If we had found something wrong, we would have addressed it, but there was nothing to the (allegations)," Kitley said.

Kitley and Guilford County school officials said there have been two diagnosed staph infections at the school this year. Both were in members of the wrestling team. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a sometimes debilitating illness increasingly common among high school athletes, was diagnosed in one of those students last week.

In a statement released Monday night, Robin Bergeron-Nolan, director of health services for Guilford County Schools, said schools are required to report 71 communicable diseases, including MRSA. Staph infection is not one of them.

Contact Robert Bell at 373-7055 or robert.bell@news-record.com