Starting Young

By Christina Weaver
Special to the Coastal Point

	Special to the Coastal Point • CHRISTINA WEAVER Marissa Lucy (front, left) and Dana Sears (far right) go over semaphore with some of the junior lifeguards. Semaphore is the method used by lifeguards to communicate with one another.

“I just love it. I’d recommend it to everyone,” he states.

Most of the local beaches hold Junior Lifeguard Programs. Bethany Beach has had its program since 1994 and because of its popularity holds its two-and-a-half hour sessions at the beginning and the end of the day. The three-day program takes place on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for seven separate weeks during the summer.

The $60 per session charge includes uniform, instruction and supervision, certificate of completion and USLA Junior Lifeguard membership. Up to 10 children can be registered for each of the programs per week and most weeks are filled to capacity. Needless to say, the children need to be able to swim to participate in the program.

The goals of the program are:

• To promote public education regarding beach and water safety

• To provide training in water safety and beach skills

• To promote health and fitness

• To develop skills in teamwork and sportsmanship

• To develop future lifeguards

The program is taught by members of the beach patrol. This year Dana Sears, her brother, Christian, and Marissa Lucy are the responsible guards. The juniors are in expert hands. Dana is the eldest of five siblings who, as lifeguards all, have helped give Bethany Beach its reputation as a safe and family friendly place to vacation. With over a decade of life guarding experience, Dana’s dedication to children is a year-round effort.

A recent graduate with a masters degree in elementary education from Wilmington College, she is the Youth Ministry Coordinator at Mariner’s Bethel Church in Ocean View. Walking along the beach, she is stopped multiple times by children who know her from her various roles in the community. When asked what it must be like to be a young person who is such a visible role model, she replied, “My dad told me, ‘If you don’t do anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about’,’ and that’s the way I live.”

Christian Sears has taught the Junior Lifeguard Program for four years. He will graduate from the University of Maryland with a degree in kinesiology in December. “The kids have fun,” he said, “and they learn the reasons for beach safety from a lifeguard perspective. They always beg on Thursdays to come back the next day.”

He added, “One of the things they like to do most is to go into the ocean and practicing rescuing each other.”

Another favorite activity for the junior guards is to take duty on the lifeguard stand. Rookies, John Marvaso and Tucker Gauvin, showed juniors Troy Scott, 13, Kelsey Boland, 10, and Chrisy Distefano, 12, what it is like to remember to constantly turn one’s head up and down their stretch of the beach being observant for signs of trouble.

“We are looking for a murky discoloration in the water which may signify a rip tide,” explained Scott. “We learned that if people get in a rip tide, they should swim parallel to the beach,” added Boland. At the end of the shift Marvaso and Gauvin asked the juniors carry the gear back to the guardhouse. As the kids huffed and puffed with the back-board, flag and orange buoys, one of them noted, “This is part of the job.”

A part of the job that is often forgotten by people who take their beach safety for granted and watch with detached interest as during tricky seas the lifeguards perform literally hundreds of successful rescues or pulls each week, is having to deal with rude adults who think the rules apply to everyone else but them and their families.

On the day the junior lifeguards were practicing their head turns, a few stands away one of the guards blew his whistle at a child who was swimming too close to the rocks and waved for the child to move between the orange flags. The child’s father angrily complained to the lifeguard who patiently explained the rationale. The father then started to play football with his family.

Once again, the lifeguard explained that throwing balls on the crowded beach was not allowed. The man then fashioned a ball with a sock filled with sand and jeered the guard by throwing it around. When the lifeguard respectfully suggested the man speak with one of the lieutenants because his attention needed to be focused on the water, the man, in full view of other beachgoers, displayed a digital expletive.

These incidents occur more commonly than one would like to think and the need for patience and politeness are as integral to the lifeguard’s job as technical skill and physical strength.

One of the skills that junior lifeguards learn on their first day and practice throughout the program is semaphore. “That’s how lifeguards communicate from one stand to the next,” noted Distefano. “If there is a lost kid, they spell out whether it is a boy or girl, the age and the color of the swimsuit. The message is sent in both directions at the same time and the kid gets to sit on the stand with the lifeguard.”

Marissa Lucy has grown up in Bethany Beach and her mom dangled her little feet in Bethany’s waves when she was six months old. She participated in one of the first junior lifeguard programs and, at age 20, has almost five years of lifeguarding experience to her name.

“I love helping teach the juniors,” she said. “It provides me an opportunity to give back to the community that has been so good to me.”

Lucy appears in a public service announcement for the American Lifeguard Association demonstrating such skills as rescue techniques, CPR and how to swim out of a rip tide. A junior at Villanova, Lucy will be studying journalism (and perhaps trying out the surf) in Australia in the fall.

Fitness is a major emphasis in the junior lifeguard program. Students in the advanced session work out with the lifeguards as they do their daily practices. And like the lifeguards the juniors are competitive, in such events as diving for beach flags, paddle boards and run swim run.

During the seventh week of the summer programs, any of the junior lifeguards who have completed the course get to compete in the Junior Lifeguard Games. This year they were held in Rehoboth Beach and included teams from Ocean City up to Rehoboth. It is a fun event for spectators, whether proud parents or the general public who wants to show its support to the lifeguards and their considerable efforts in keeping our beaches safe.