WATERFORD, Conn. (AP) – The state is looking into why more than 230 New England college students developed a skin rash after an October cross country meet at Harkness Memorial State Park.

Officials have not completed their investigation, but coaches believe the culprit may have been about three feet of standing water left on part of the course by heavy rains and high tide.

The waterfront park attracts many migrating birds in the fall, and their fecal matter generates the parasite thought to be responsible for the rash, which can cause oozing and scabs and lead to secondary infections. It is easily treatable and doesn’t leave scars.

Meaghan Seelhaus, a Connecticut College senior, said that about a week after the race her legs were covered with red, itchy bumps.

“It’s all cleared up now,” she said. “All I have left is some scars. But there were boils and oozing. It was really itchy and painful. It was pretty terrible.”

She and dozens of other afflicted students posted comments about their experience on the networking Web site Facebook under the heading “Victims of the NESCAC (New England Small College Athletic Conference) Rash.”

Ned Bishop, women’s cross country coach at Connecticut College, said the water wasn’t on the course when it was set the morning of the race.

About 60 percent of the 380 runners who participated got the rash, thought to be “swimmer’s itch” or “clam digger’s itch” – cercarial dermatitis or schistosomiasis – caused by a parasite that can penetrate the skin.

Bishop said the team has had no similar problems during four years of using Harkness for races and 15 years of practicing there.

“We all see this as just a really strange confluence of events that is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence,” he said.

Once he receives a report from the state health department, he said he will send it to coaches and runners at the 11 colleges that participated.

He and Connecticut College men’s cross country coach James Butler, who also got the rash, said they will take extra precautions to make sure future courses do not have standing water.

“Harkness was not at fault at all,” Butler said. “What happened was a real anomaly. We’re not really worried it will ever happen again.”

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Information from: The Day, http://www.theday.com

AP-ES-12-07-06 1223EST