Thursday, October 1, 2026
Tammy McLoughlin’s feet pounded across the sand at Jones Beach State Park on a sunny June day. It was the third time in her life that she was making this run, and as she crossed the finish line, the small crowd watching her erupted in cheers. She nearly collapsed, having little strength left in her.
The Merrick native had dashed three-quarters of a mile on hard sand in 5 minutes, 25 seconds. This was the fourth and final segment of the Jones Beach rookie lifeguard test, and she was 35 seconds faster than the cutoff time, 6 minutes, needed to pass.
At 45, McLoughlin was one of the oldest people taking the “new-hire” test, but the mother of four wasn’t your average lifeguard candidate.
McLoughlin first qualified for the Jones Beach Lifeguard Corps in 1984, at age 18. As a competitive swimmer at Calhoun High School for six years, she was encouraged by her coach, Ed Peters, to try out for the corps. McLoughlin made it, and went on to earn a full scholarship to swim at St. John’s University.
She was a lifeguard for 15 years, until 1999, when she decided to take time off to care for her family, but the memories she had made at Jones Beach never left her. Tammy and her husband, Brian, brought their children to the beach regularly, and she regularly regaled them with tales of lifeguarding.
Last year, her oldest daughter, Amanda, now 19, encouraged her to consider going back to the job that she loved. “She said, ‘You know what, Mom? You should try for it again,’” McLoughlin recalled.
She had stopped swimming regularly, but with her family supporting her, she set out to work herself back into shape to take on the Jones Beach test. Lifeguard candidates must complete a 100-yard freestyle swim in under 1 minute, 15 seconds, a cross-chest carry of a rescue dummy, a 400- to 500-meter swim in the frigid early-June Atlantic and the three-quarter-mile run on the sand.
In June 2010, McLoughlin put her training to the test along with dozens of other lifeguard hopefuls. She passed the first three parts of the test, but struggled to the finish line of the final run in 6 minutes, 24 seconds — less than half a minute too slow. “It crushed me,” she said.
