By ARIELLA MONTI
On June 8, 110 people stood in quiet, nervous groups around the perimeter of Jones Beach's West Bathhouse pool. They were about to begin competing for one of 39 open spots for rookies at the state parks on Long Island that are patrolled by the Jones Beach Lifeguard Corps.
Petite, 17-year-old Sarah DeFino had been a Red Cross-certified lifeguard only six months when she arrived at the pool. The Bellmore resident is a junior at Kellenberg High School, and has been running track since she was a freshman. Unfortunately, she would have to complete two challenging swims before she could show her running talent in the third of four parts of the grueling morning-long test.
"The 100 is the only part I'm nervous about," DeFino said of the first swim, a three-lap, 100-yard sprint in the pool that applicants were required to finish in under 1 minute, 15 seconds. "I'm more of a runner." Her mother, Debbie, said her daughter was hoping the 3/4-mile beach run would be the first event, to give her a strong start in the competition.
Freeport resident Dermott Kramer, meanwhile, relaxed -- or tried to -- on a lounge chair while he waited for his 100 heat to be called. "I'm pretty nervous," the 17-year-old said. Another Red Cross-certified guard, Kramer works at the Freeport Recreation Center, but was hoping to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather at Jones Beach.
His grandfather Donald F. Kramer guarded at the park for 35 years. Dermott's father, 32-year Jones Beach veteran Donald S. Kramer, stood on the walkway above the pool, timing his son's heat. "I know he'll pass the test," Donald S. said confidently. "But I can't believe the swimmers that are out here!"
Neither Dermott, who plays lacrosse, nor DeFino had ever swum competitively, and they were up against swimmers who train year-round, which made the task of scoring high enough overall to nab one of the coveted lifeguard spots difficult, if not impossible.
When her heat began, DeFino dived into the water and sprinted for all she was worth, clambering out of the pool three laps later tired and out of breath. "It definitely feels like a race," she gasped. But she soon got the bad news: She had finished in 1:22, and her tryout was over.
"I will definitely try again next year," she said she packed up her equipment. "I know what to expect now and how the competition is." For now, she said, she would look for a job at a pool in Montauk, where she and her family spend their summers.
When his heat was called, Kramer, wearing a Jones Beach lifeguard swimsuit, plunged in and raced against the clock. "I'm hurting right now," he said after climbing out of the pool. But his time was good enough -- 1:11 -- for him to move on to the next challenge, a 400-yard swim in the breathtakingly cold ocean.
Mario Mauro, a Jones Beach veteran of 13 years who helps train rookie guards, explained that the ocean swim can be difficult for club swimmers who are used to following a line at the bottom of the pool. The dark water and the movement of waves and tides make it easy to swim off course. Competitors run down the beach, turn and high-step into the water, fight their way through incoming waves and swim out to a buoy, turn and swim parallel to the shore to another buoy, then turn back toward land and run up onto the beach.
Kramer collapsed, exhausted, on the sand after he crossed the finish line. "It's so much more than brutal," he said of the effort. "I feel like I'm not alive right now." He stood not far from where another swimmer was being cared for by EMS personnel after vomiting for several minutes.
In the third part of the test, the 3/4-mile run, the fatigued participants raced along the water's edge, their bare feet pounding the sand. Here Kramer's lacrosse background helped, and he finished under the cutoff time of 6 minutes. He headed back to the pool for the final test, a timed swimming rescue of a mannequin, with a crowd of lifeguard wannabes that was significantly smaller than it had been when the morning started. Those left standing guzzled water and ate energy bars while waiting for their heat to be called back into the water. The end was in sight.
After the swim with mannequins, a total of 77 lifeguard candidates had passed all four tests, and they gathered nervously in a West Bathhouse meeting room to find out if they had placed high enough overall to qualify for jobs. One by one, lifeguard Director Joe Scalise called the names of the top finishers, and they filled in the available openings.
The list of those spots was relatively short, explained Bruce Meirowitz, who has worked at Jones Beach for 40 years and also trains each year's incoming rookies, partly because of the struggling economy. When lifeguard who are graduating from college have a hard time finding full-time jobs, they come back to the beach. And many other guards, of course, hold on to their jobs for years.
Kramer waited hopefully for Scalise to call his name, but he didn't make the list of 39 lucky lifeguards-to-be. He went home disappointed -- but was already making plans to try out again next year.
Comments about this story? AMonti@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext 282.
