On paper, a job where you spend the entire day sitting quietly in a chair looking around doesn't sound all that demanding. But lifeguards know what’s at stake. It’s a big responsibility, carried mostly by young people who lifeguard at Bloomington-Normal’s public pools.
For this episode of WGLT's Sounds of Summer series, Ryan Denham spent the day with three lifeguards at Fairview Aquatic Center in Normal. Here’s an audio postcard of the visit.
Nate Hartke, a second-year lifeguard with Normal Parks and Rec: “When I first took the job, I was a little worried about having other people’s lives in my hand. And I’d say that’s still sometimes the most challenging part – being like, you always have to know what you're doing and we have to be prepared to do it.”
Nick Pulley, a third-year lifeguard: “The anxiety of that initial ‘It could happen’ never goes away though.”
Neil Alford, a second-year lifeguard: “Knowing that we're trained for anything that happens, but real life doesn't match the textbook scenarios.”
Pulley: “The training process is pretty simple. You got your certification class, which is a three-day long weekend class…”
Alford: “… where you go through every single type of save, all the First Aids, every kind of thing that we use that’s more Town of Normal-specific."
Hartke: “There's an active save: That's when the person is flailing a little bit and just needs help. And that's usually (when) we jump in and we just hand them the tube. But then there's also a passive save, which is when they go unconscious. And that's when it becomes more serious, and we have to quickly get them out of the water. And then there's also a spinal save, when they might have hurt their spine. And that's when it becomes more delicate. We have to get we have to get out of the stand and crawl in safely so we don't hurt anything.”
Hartke: “So there's one short whistle. One short whistle is when we're trying to get a patron’s attention, to tell them to stop doing something or we have something else to tell them about a rule. Two double whistles means we need someone to come help us. We need like a manager here. One long whistle means it's an active save: We have to jump in and give someone their tube, make sure we can get them to safety. And then two long whistles is an emergency.”
Alford: “As part of our training process, we have to have all of the new guards come in and do what's called ‘shadowing,’ where they just watch all of the zones with a veteran guard and stand with them.”
Hartke: “We train every week. We want everyone to be always ready and prepared for anything that can happen.”
Keeping your focus
Pulley: “Keeping your focus is definitely a challenging task. I try to pick two or three things to focus on in the water specifically.”
Alford: “There are problem spots in each zone. But then we have to scan the entire zone as a whole too. It’s a lot easier to keep our focus when there's a lot of people in the zone, because it stresses us out a lot more that something might happen.”
Hartke: “You’re always having to keep your 10-20 – that’s what we call it – scanning the whole pool in 10 seconds.”
Pulley: “One of the ways that we keep focused is we have a rule where every 5 minutes you change position, whether that's you stand up, you sit down, something like that. So that also kind of serves as a physical trigger to reset your brain to keep focusing in.”
Hartke: “I like to sing songs, or I'll sing songs that are on the radio. That always keeps me focused. It allows me to have something else going on while I make sure everyone's being safe and doing what they're supposed to do.”
Favorite part of the job
Alford: “I like the people. I've met a lot of my closest friends here. So it's been a really good experience.”
Hartke: “Honestly, I feel left out when I'm not working sometimes, because I know they're having fun here. Can't beat being outside in the sun, the sun feels great. It's always great to be near the water, you get to go swimming.”
Pulley: “It's a really great job. There are some really hard days, but the people here I've just made it so much easier.”
The hard days
Pulley: “The hard days are just, they're long, there's a lot to do. It's usually like the really hot days, the really long days, you're really tired. You have to do a lot of cleaning. Maybe there's a lot of rule-breakers or things to do. It's just a lot. You go home exhausted.”
Hartke: [ WGLT: How many times a shift do you have to say Don’t Run”? ] “Too many to count. I mean, at some point, it’s just natural. I see someone running a little bit and I go, ‘Walk!’ and it becomes almost the highlight of my day.”
Pulley: “For rule-breakers, if it's like a smaller thing, I always start off with a really nice tone. Like, if I'm yelling at someone to walk, it'll start kind of like, “Hey hon, walk” or “Walk please.” If they keep doing it, I'll start getting a little more stern with it, like, “Walk! Walk!”
Most challenging part
Hartke: “When I first took the job, I was a little worried about having other people's lives in my hands. And I'd say that's still sometimes the most challenging part being like, alright, you always have to know what you're doing, always have to be prepared to do it. But as it goes on, when you have so many trainings you get a lot better at it and you're always prepared. But I'd say that's definitely the hardest challenge – besides maybe some of the cleaning. We do have to clean.”
Alford: “So the most challenging is when we have to work through something that's not going the way it is supposed to have gone in the book, and we have to think on the fly while still keeping everyone safe.”
Hanna Razo, aquatics and special events supervisor with Normal Parks and Rec: “The last few years, finding and hiring lifeguards has been kind of a struggle in ways. We had that year during COVID that we were closed. So a lot of the returning guards that we would have had that year were obviously not returning for the future year. COVID hurt us a little bit. But in general, I think nationwide the lifeguard shortage is a real problem.
Razo: “We want someone who's going to be here on time each day. We want people who are going to show up to work. We don't want people to be calling in (sick/out) all the time. Good attitudes. That’s huge for them to have a good attitude when they come in. Some days we have some not-so-fun things happen or multiple rescues happen, or things even happen outside of the water that we have to deal with. So every day is a new day, and they need to remember that and come in with a good attitude each day.”
Alford: “It's important to remember that while we are up in the (lifeguard) stand and we are watching over everyone, we have up to like a couple hundred people in our pools at any given time. We can have several hundred depending on the day, whereas parents only have a few that they are kind of watching over.”
Nate Hartke: “As our manager says over the intercom, ‘Safety is a shared responsibility.’”
