There is a shortage of lifeguards, which has led to a reduction in services at the Memorial Sports Complex. Because of this, the staff that are there are working hard to keep the limited services available.
Recreation and Culture Manager Tyler Young says the issue with not having enough trained lifeguards could be around for a while.
“We’re dealing with a shortage of lifeguards,” Young said. “We’ve been dealing with the shortage since the beginning of September because a lot of guards went back to school, so they’ve left town. The challenge is we didn’t have a succession plan in place and in the aquatics world you need a succession plan to be at least two to three years out. Training someone to be a guard from scratch, to be a guard you have to get through swimming lessons then it’s a one to two year period.”
Once the full course of swimming lessons is completed swimmers need to go through bronze cross and medallion as well as having first aid training.
“Once you have your swimming lessons, you go into bronze medallion, then you go to NLS (National Lifeguard Certification) once you’re 16 and then if you want to be an instructor, you get your instructor’s (certification) as well,” Young said. “It’s usually a year or two to make that happen because of availability of instructors and pool time. That kind of thing. So typically in an aquatic environment you want to make sure you’re looking at least two years ahead.”
As there was no succession plan in place there are no young lifeguards to work at this time and services have had to be reduced drastically.
“We reduced some fitness programming, lessons are completely gone, as we just didn’t have the capacity to maintain that,” Young said.
A big issue with holding lessons is that there needs to be instructors as well as lifeguards. An instructor cannot be a lifeguard while they’re in the pool with students. At this time not all of the eight available lifeguards are qualified as instructors. Young says this will change in January,but not all of the staff, some full-time, some part-time have the same availability.
When he realized there was going to be such a severe reduction in service Young said he brought the staff together to try to figure out a course of action.
“So those who are left, I took them aside and I said ‘we have to figure something out,’” Young said. “Obviously a lot of the news coming out isn’t positive, no lessons, reduction in fitness, that type of thing. How can we still salvage what we have with the team we have and do some exciting things as opposed to just cutting?”
Young says the team that is still there is very dedicated and passionate about their jobs and came up with ideas.
“The first event that came out of that discussion was the Halloween haunted swim. It was a themed swim, we made it look spooky for people coming to swim,” Young said. “Now we’re looking ahead to do more themed swims so we have a Christmas swim coming up with a tentative date of Dec. 17 there will be more details about that.”
Young says the team did a lot of work to be ready for the Halloween swim, some staying late into the night, the night before to make sure the pool was ready.
“We’re going to hopefully get to a point where we can do monthly swims more themed swims,” Young said. “We’re looking at new programs in the pool like water polo. The challenge we have is very limited resources.”
Young says that because of the limited resources there is a challenge of putting resources where they can be best used.
“So we have to take the resources we have, like one big puzzle and move everyone around to make sure we’re trying to capture as much as we can,” He said. “From theme swims to fitness, to lane swims, while trying to train guards and look for new guards, right. So it’s this perfect storm of uncertainty.”
The search for new lifeguards is proving somewhat challenging in large part due to the age requirement. If someone has the qualifications of Bronze Star and Medallion, they can become an assistant lifeguard at 15. This gives them the opportunity to learn the ropes and become part of the team and then when they turn 16 they already have most of the knowledge they need to become a full lifeguard. As a long-term solution staff have been reaching out to senior members of the local Cyclones swim club to start the training process but that still takes time.
“If you look at it long term we’re looking into the swim club in town which is the Cyclones,” Young said. “Individuals there obviously like to swim so maybe they want to turn that into a job?”
The issue is not an isolated problem. Young says he’s spoken to his counterparts in other communities like Dryden and Kenora who are going through the same issue.
In an effort to help in the short term, Young is asking if anyone who was formerly a lifeguard, whether still certified or not, would like some work hours to reach out to the sports complex. However, due to this shortage it seems like it will be some time before things are able to get back to full capacity.
