OLDS — The Aquatic Centre is looking at offering a day-in-the life-of-a-lifeguard experience for those interested in taking up that role, community services director Doug Wagstaff says.
It’s part of an effort to recruit more lifeguards for the facility. Staff are also going to continue running National Lifeguard certification programs at the pool.
Earlier this year, chief administrative officer Brent Williams said the pool experienced such a shortage of lifeguards that it had to close during Family Day on Feb. 20 and for several days during the Christmas break.
“The pool is working with the communications department right now on doing an open house that’s geared at recruitment to be a lifeguard; so a day in the life of a lifeguard," Wagstaff said during an April presentation to council.
"It hasn’t been fleshed out yet,” he added, “but we’re looking to be able to kind of do shadowing where people can apply to come in, be a shadow for a day over a period of time.”
He said the hope is to “get people of all ages” who might otherwise not have thought of doing the job to learn all about it.
Wagstaff said the lifeguard certification program will be coordinated with other pools in the area to ensure the programs don’t overlap.
He also announced that for the first time since 2017, two teams of pool staff will be participating in the lifeguard games which will be held May 7 at the University of Calgary.
Wagstaff said several members of the Aquatic Centre staff will attend those games to cheer on their teams.
“They’ve made it into a both training and prep as well as a team building with the group," he said.
Coun. Darren Wilson asked Wagstaff why there’s such a shortage of lifeguards at the pool.
“Is this a function of the pandemic where we weren’t -- and communities weren’t -- able to provide training? Or is this a bigger issue just within that primarily target demographic of the youth that want to be lifeguards,” he asked.
“Has that position lost its glamour, its glitz and people don’t want to do that?”
He noted that there doesn’t seem to be a shortage at pools in other surrounding communities.
Wagstaff said the problem is not unique to Olds.
“It’s across the industry. Not just here, not just Alberta, not just Canada, all of North America,” he said.
He said in Olds’ case at least, COVID restrictions interrupted the pipeline of youth who may have been interested in becoming lifeguards.
“All of a sudden you had those swimmers that haven’t been swimming for three years. You were 15, about to become a lifeguard, you’re no longer in that stream or you’re restarting from zero,” Wagstaff said.
He picked up on Wilson’s query regarding the “glitz” of the job.
“This isn’t Baywatch,” Wagstaff said. “I mean, there is a lot of responsibility for those lifeguards, regardless of their age, but especially young people.”
A third problem, Wagstaff said, is it can be pretty costly to go into the program.
“A challenge for the recruitment is in order to get hired, you have to have a few thousand dollars invested in your certifications: you know, your bronze cross, your bronze medallion, your national lifeguard certification.
“Those have to come before you’re able to even apply to become a lifeguard.
“And if you are looking at it as a part time gig, you might kind of question putting those kind of dollars in.
“That's what we’re looking at is how we can maybe try to help that and overcome that.
“But we want to make sure we get that benefit, that we don’t train someone and then it goes to the benefit of other pools.”
Wagstaff stressed that there are lots of benefits to being a lifeguard and it is “still enjoyable.”
