It’s a good day to be a Junior lifeguard! yelled the graduating junior lifeguards 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 out loud at Santa Clara Rec Center, Friday, Aug. 11, their faces beamed pride as each student walked up to receive their certificate of completion.
The Junior Lifeguard program can help ease the pain of a boring summer while preparing young ones for the challenges of life. Staffed by the Lifeguard Service, they are 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, respect for one another and the coastal environment.
Every summer, children and teens ages 9 to 17 years old, go to the beach for a four-week program designed to teach them a variety of skills like ocean safety, life saving techniques, CPR and swimming skills. They also participate in a variety of beach activities like body surfing, body boarding, surfing, beach volleyball and kayaking that stimulate healthy competition with other Junior Lifeguard programs. At the end of the program, sort of as a right of passage, the Junior guards jump off of the Ocean Beach Pier. The procedure is absolutely safe and supervised by the Lifeguards and instructors.
A lifeguard coordinator, a lifeguard sergeant and a lifeguard lieutenant guide the kids through the program designed to give them a rewarding experience from which to draw from for the rest of their lives.
“Whether conquering the spirit of the ocean, or the surf, or maybe they’ll pick up a new skill. 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 program. The Jackie Robinson YMCA provides a bus that transports approximately 30 students to take them 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 and the life lessons involved with it, Carranza said.
Involvement with the community is important since the Junior Lifeguard program is self-funded. Everything is paid for by the cost of tuition per student and donations made groups like the Jackie Robinson YMCA, so 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 the scholarship program for those who need financial aid.
Donors who help the Junior Lifeguards help support a multitude of other educational outreach programs. Programs like Operation Waterproof, where lifeguards go out to school children and make presentations about beach safety, and Waterproof San Diego which is a program aimed at educating parents and children ages 4 and under about water safety, according to Buchanan.
Buchanan has been with the Junior Lifeguard program for two years and said he looks forward to many years of directing the program. He said that in order to have a successful program they need a collective community participating. Buchanan said the Junior Lifeguard program will continue to grow next year to include an adult version of the program.
“We believe what were 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.
To help raise funds for Junior Lifeguards’ outreach programs, organizers have partnered with the Online Golf Association (OGA), which will donate $15 for every person who signs up using the affiliate code “SD Jr Lifeguard.”
To sign up, visit www.onlinegolfassociation.com.
For information about the Junior Lifeguard program, visit www.sandiego.gov/lifeguards.