By Marley Seaman
In fact, the Jones Beach Lifeguard Corps Junior Lifeguard Program was created because of kids who wanted to swim. "I had a couple of kids come up to me and say they wanted to be junior lifeguards," said Scott Riegel, the program's founder and operator. The kids wondered if Jones Beach had a program like the one that existed in Long Beach. It didn't - yet.
There were about 20 junior lifeguards in 2000, the program's first year, and 200 this summer, ranging in age from 9 to 16. The program has become so popular that Riegel can no longer take all applicants. Starting next year, 9-year-olds will not be accepted.
The junior lifeguards compete in regional and national tournaments, and a team of 25 traveled to the U.S. Lifesaving Association nationals in Huntington Beach, Calif., last week. Team sponsor and trainer Bob Adler, a Jones Beach lifeguard, said the competition team "dominated" a recent contest in Sea Girt, N.J. The Jones Beach program hosts an event of its own, and team members also participated in the Empire State Games and the Maccabee Games.
Interested kids must take a swim test, and are only accepted into the program if they can swim 100 yards quickly enough. Kids who are 14 and older are held to the same standard as regular Jones Beach guards - maximum time 1 minute, 15 seconds. (Most of the adults who are hired as lifeguards are at least 10 seconds faster than that.) The junior guards are divided into groups based on their ages, and each group is supervised by five or six Jones Beach guards. The activities vary depending on the kids' ages, but all groups perform calisthenics and get to swim in the open ocean.
"We train them to do the job as well as to test for it," said Adler. The job includes "ocean entries and exits in surf, ocean swimming, sand running, which is completely different from running on a road ... We also train them in using the rescue buoys, making entries and actually doing practice rescues."
In addition to training with kayaks and surfboards, the juniors learn how to gauge the way the ocean is "moving" - its "sweep" - and how to swim effectively in different kinds of surf.
"I never knew how to swim in the ocean," said 9-year-old Seanna Barrett of West Hempstead. Barrett completed her first year in the program last Sunday. "Now that I've done this, I know how to do it right."
Barrett said she wants to be a lifeguard one day, and according to Adler, she has a good chance to reach that goal if she stays in the program. "In the last three years, we've had about 20, closer to 25 [kids] who have gone through the junior training and been hired full-time," he said. If anything, he added, students like Barrett have an advantage because they will be prepared for the grueling Jones Beach new-hire test.
For more information, see the Junior Lifeguard Program's Web site at
www.jblifeguard.com/phpBB2/jrlgs.php.
Comments about this story? MSeaman@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 205.
