By JOHN P. DESMOND
When Sarah Currey gets to the beach to start her day as a lifeguard in Sandwich at 8 AM, she joins in the effort of the lifeguard team to prepare for the day.
A senior at Sandwich High School, Sarah has been a lifeguard for two summers, having started in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. The team engages in drills for an hour before opening up the ponds.
Sandwich staffs three freshwater ponds with lifeguards during the summer: Oakcrest Cove at Peter’s Pond, Snake Pond and Wakeby Lake/Ryder Conservation Lands. The town’s four ocean-facing beaches were not staffed with lifeguards last season, but three of the four were open to the general public, one to Sandwich residents only.
The team of 18 or so lifeguards breaks into groups, with one group doing a 500-meter swim, one group practicing save skills and one group working on athletic skills. They might run through an emergency action plan, where everyone has a role for how to respond; for example, when a swimmer might be submerged or passive. The team has two mannequins to practice on, courtesy of local donations.
“We usually run through emergency procedures to get ready for the day,” Sarah said, including reviewing material covered in lifeguard certification training and in a program called “in-service” that Sandwich has developed to help the lifeguards stay on top of their game. The plans of action cover a range of scenarios, including a child who might be choking or an adult suspected of having a stroke.
The beach opens at 9 AM, with beachgoers trickling in. For the summer of 2020 the lifeguard teams rotated beaches, but in the summer of 2021 the plan was to stay with the same team at the same beach for the summer. “It created super team bonding,” Sarah said.
The three ponds are slightly different. “Each pond has a different vibe,” she said. Snake Pond gets more than 100 people in the water at one time on busy days. “So, it’s a lot of scanning,” Sarah said. The guards rotate between watching the water and being a rover, on a schedule they determine at the beginning of the day.
They also set up buoys marking the swimming area and examine the beach for any hazards, “like glass or shells that kids tend to step on,” Sarah said.
Summer campers go to Oakcrest Cove, where swimming lessons were conducted last year by lifeguards with a Water Safety Instruction certificate. “I like it when the kids come down. I grew up on these ponds. I remember being so afraid of the lifeguards. So I like to talk to them and tell them they can always come to us,” she said.
The lifeguards drink a lot of water and apply sunscreen during the day. On rainy days, they typically work on posters for the guard shack with lifeguard safety points.
Sandwich is practicing a model of lifeguard training that has the Sandwich Public Schools and Sandwich Recreation Department working together to recruit and train lifeguards on a continuous basis. Taking advantage of the pool at Sandwich High School, students in grades 7 to 12 have the opportunity to take lifeguard certification instead of physical education for one of four PE semesters required to graduate.
Sandwich physical education and wellness teacher Wendy Pierce is certified by the Red Cross to teach and certify lifeguards and water safety instructors (WSI). Sandwich is the only high school on the Cape to have its own pool, a distinct advantage.
“It’s great,” Ms. Pierce said. “It works out brilliantly.” She gets 30 to 50 students a year taking the lifeguarding session and a dozen in the WSI instruction, a mix of sophomores, juniors and seniors. At age 14, students can be junior lifeguards; at age 16, they can be full lifeguards. Financially, it’s a good deal too. “They only have to pay the $30 certification fee,” saving what is typically $400 for the lifeguard course, she said.
The junior lifeguard program run by the recreation department helps to replenish the pool of lifeguards, said Tricia MacDonald, assistant recreation director for Sandwich. “To be certified as a junior lifeguard requires 20 hours a week of training and shadowing and getting to know the beaches,” she said. “Many of them stay certified and come back to us, and they know what the job is before coming on.”
For students, it is an opportunity to gain experience and leadership skills that can be helpful for planning their futures. “We are always writing recommendations,” Ms. MacDonald said, including two for the military path and two for medical schools recently.
The Sandwich High School program was offered in the pandemic year of 2020, with some adjustments. Ms. Pierce secured grants from the Kiwanis, the PTA and the Cape Cod Foundation to buy two life-size, sinkable mannequins for lifeguard training, so that close contact was not required for CPR and other skills.
All the students who want to pursue certification are able to get jobs. Sarah said, “I worked at a lot of places inside, a supermarket and a hotel. So just being able to be outside at the beach, even with COVID, wasn’t terrible. It was the best job you could have.”
Jacob Townsend is a student at Cape Cod Community College who is in his sixth summer as a lifeguard, his fourth in Sandwich. He is now a head lifeguard and the head of water safety instruction for the recreation department.
He is Red Cross-certified in lifeguarding and water safety instruction. “We have a swim director above me who works with me to ensure I’m teaching the correct lesson plan and have the equipment I need,” said Jacob, who works as a substitute teacher in the Sandwich Public Schools as he studies to be a teacher. He will complete his second year at CCCC this semester and plans to attend Bridgewater State University in the fall to work toward a teaching degree.
Because the swim director is a Red Cross-certified instructor, “She renews my certification when I go through training in the summer, so it’s a rolling recertification,” Jacob said.
His summer boss is recreation department aquatics director Sara Arella, who is a physical education and wellness teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School in Cambridge during the school year.
“I am a Red Cross instructor-trainer, so I am able to reach and recertify lifeguards and junior lifeguards,” Ms. Arella said, noting that the junior lifeguard course she helped to get off the ground in 2018 has been “pivotal” to the town’s ability to have a roster of qualified lifeguards. “Between our program and the program at Sandwich High School they run during the school year, we are able to have at least 18 lifeguards” each season, she said. The number of committed lifeguards for 2022 in Sandwich is “looking pretty good,” she said.
The in-service course that Ms. Arella created in Sandwich runs all summer long, as a continuous review of skills and drills. “We use it throughout the season to make our guards stronger and possibly become candidates to be a head guard.” she said. The strongest candidates will apply to become a head guard the following season.
In this way, the Sandwich High School program during the school year and the Sandwich Recreation Department program during the summer complement each other and produce a renewed pool of lifeguards each year. Of the students coming out of the high school lifeguards program, she said, “In June, they are ready to go.” The synergy between the two programs creates a progression for the youths to move forward, she said.
Lifeguard Sarah said of the school training, “I left that class feeling very confident.”
Having certified lifeguard instructors in the public schools working during the school year and in the summer season gives Sandwich the means to operate a self-contained lifeguard certification system. Access to Red Cross “train the trainer” programs, which the Red Cross calls Instructor Training Academies, requires a commitment of time to travel outside Massachusetts since the Red Cross is not currently offering an academy program within the state.
To expand the pool of lifeguards on the Cape, Ms. Arella sees a Cape-based academy to “train the trainers” as needed.
The Red Cross is open to running an Instructor Training Academy on the Cape, said Gwen McNamara, northeast aquatics manager at American Red Cross Training Services.
“Any facility interested in hosting that is welcome to apply,” she said, noting, “We have not had a facility come forward to say they can host that program. We are always looking for people willing to host.” She noted that the Red Cross does not own any pools.
The Red Cross has 475 lifeguard instructors and 60 lifeguard instructor trainers in Massachusetts, which meets its national standards for ratios. The Red Cross defines three levels of certifications in this area: lifeguards, lifeguarding instructors who can train and certify lifeguards, and lifeguard trainers who train and certify instructors. The Red Cross runs its training academies to certify the latter group.
The pandemic caused an interruption in the cycle of lifeguard certifications, which is now having a ripple effect. “We are hearing that some facilities are staffed and ready to go and some are struggling,” Ms. McNamara said. The Red Cross is seeing a slight but not dramatic dip from two years ago in the number of lifeguards being trained, and the nonprofit is expecting to see an increase in coming months.
Meanwhile, lifeguards Sarah and Jacob are looking forward to returning to the beaches of Sandwich this summer. Sarah encourages any interested middle or high school students to pursue lifeguarding. “It’s a lot of responsibility but it’s still fun, and you have an opportunity to grow,” she said, noting that she was in the head guard training program last year.
This spring, Sarah will be thinking about which college to attend to study neuroscience or neurobiology. She’s considering Northeastern University, Georgetown and Dartmouth College.