It’s a good day to be a Junior lifeguard! yelled the graduates as they received recognition for completing the four-week program provided by the Lifeguard Service. The Junior Lifeguards sat in the grassy area as their names were read aloud at Santa Clara Rec Center, Friday, Aug. 11, their faces beaming with pride as each student walked up to receive a certificate of completion.
Staffed by the Lifeguard Service, the program is taught by a team of aquatic professionals whose stated mission is to provide a fun and safe educational environment for the youth of San Diego so they can develop confidence, mental and physical fitness, and respect for one another and the coastal environment.
Every summer, children and teens age 9 to 17 enroll in the program to learn a variety of skills, such as ocean safety, life saving techniques and CPR. They also participate in beach activities like body surfing, body boarding, surfing, beach volleyball and kayaking that stimulate healthy competition.
At the end of the program, sort of as a right of passage, the junior guards jump off of the Ocean Beach Pier. Lifeguards and instructors supervised the jump.
“A lot of times, for the kids, just meeting new friends is important,” said Lifeguard Sergeant Eric Care.
Care has been with the program for eight years and works directly with the students and helps supervise their activities at the beach. He said he has seen amazing transformations in kids that were once afraid of the water. By the end of the program they were going for a buoy swim, he said.
The program reaches out to youth all over the city. The lifeguards value their community involvement and have developed partnerships with the Jackie Robinson YMCA and City Heights Swim Center to attract inner city youth who would otherwise not know about the opportunity. The Jackie Robinson YMCA provides a bus that transports approximately 30 students to the Santa Clara Recreation Center where the program is headquartered, said City Heights Swim Center Liaison Cynthia Carranza. There are scholarship programs available for those who qualify.
The personal development of the youth involved with junior lifeguards is the direct result of the efforts of everyone involved in the program.
” For the kids who do it year after year it’s a big a sense of pride that they have. They stand up a little bit taller with their shoulders back.” Carranza said.
If it weren’t for the partnership of the different organizations involved, a lot of these kids would not be able to take advantage of the program, Carranza said.
Community involvement is important because Junior Lifeguards is self-funded. Tuition and group donations pay for the program.
It’s important that the community help out as much as possible, said Lifeguard Lieutenant Greg Buchanan. Every year, about $50,000 of the money raised by the program goes to fund scholarships for those who need financial aid.
Donors who help the Junior Lifeguards also support a multitude of other educational outreach programs about beach and water safety, according to Buchanan.
Buchanan has been with the Junior Lifeguards for two years and said he looks forward to many years of directing the program. He said that next year the guards will launch a similar program for adults.
“We believe what we’re doing is quality and not only are we going to enrich it further but we’re going to have more fun, involve more people and grow this whole concept so that everyone in the City of San Diego says ‘That’s our Junior Lifeguard program,'” Buchanan said.