Jr. Lifeguards Seek Place in the Sun

Tina Schultz was beside herself as her son Emil rounded a turn post and started digging for the finish line like a frightened sand crab. Tina cheered wildly as Emil passed the baton to a teammate in the beach relay race, giving his team a narrow lead.

“I’m not sure who gets more excited at these things,” Schultz said Friday at the 1987 Southwest Regional Junior Lifeguard Championships in Huntington Beach.

“We didn’t win,” said the Santa Cruz mother, “but those kids gave it 100%. You gotta love ‘em.”

Proud parents were only part of the picture that unfolded north of the Huntington Beach Pier as 750 youngsters, ages 9 to 17, sprinted, stroked and paddled for titles in 25 events.

Today, senior lifeguards--those older than 17 who are paid, lifesaving professionals--compete for honors.

But Friday’s competition was strictly an amateur affair, with future lifeguards testing their toned and tanned bodies against the clock--and each other.

Grouped by age into three divisions, the contestants came from as far away as Santa Cruz and San Diego. They were each limited to three events, including a half-mile ocean swim, a paddle-board relay and a grueling run-swim-run race.

After a long swim, one 13-year-old girl emerged from the choppy ocean and struggled up the beach in tears. “I’m last, dead last,” she sobbed as her mother wrapped her quivering body in a towel.

At her reassuring best, the mother tried to sooth the girl’s soggy ego. “It’s only a race, and there will be others,” she said. “We’re here to have fun, remember?”

But there was more at stake than a Friday at Huntington Beach.

Twenty teams--including five from Orange County--were competing for a chance to travel to Hawaii early next month for national junior lifeguard honors.

Adults recorded the sandy saga with cameras. Tina Schultz’s husband, suffering from an ankle injury, put a large plastic bag over his knee-high cast and hobbled across the sand to videotape his two sons, who were competing for the Capitola team.

Many in the crowd glanced nervously at the large scoreboard as the day wore on, but some parents steered talk away from the subject of winning and losing. They said the junior lifeguard program--usually an affair of 6-8 weeks that resembles summer camp--teaches water safety, builds healthy young bodies and drives home discipline and responsibility.

Learning and Exercise

Jeanne Preall of Huntington Beach said her son’s high school football coach encouraged Jeremy, 14, to enroll in the city’s junior lifeguard program. “The coach said there isn’t a better exercise program in the world,” she said.

Becoming safe in the water is what sold Cheryl Van Sleet of San Clemente. “I love it, simply love it because they learn about the ocean, the riptides and how to handle themselves in the water,” she said, referring to her teen-aged boy and girl. Both youngsters have been junior lifeguards.

But Van Sleet’s daughter, Melissa, has another, more practical reason: “You get a great tan.”