High Life: A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : He Gives Students a Lot of Strokes : Aquatics: Early lessons pay off for lifeguard/ coach/competitor from Irvine’s University High.

When Craig Alpert’s family moved into their house in Irvine, they had a pool built in their back yard. And despite having a fence around the water, Delores Alpert, Craig’s mother, believed her children should be “pool safe.”

So, three years after she enrolled her oldest daughter, Lauren, in swim lessons, she enrolled her son at the Blue Boy Swim School in Tustin. Craig was 2, and, his mother said, “hated swimming. . . . He screamed and yelled.”

Delores Alpert was told by the swimming instructor to wait in the parking lot during the lessons.

“It’s a stage they go through, around 2 to 2 1/2,” she said. “The instructor said it was because they’re frightened; there’s no bottom or top in the water. They have no sense of standing up. They get terrified. But when the parent is away, there’s no one to scream to.”

It wasn’t long, however, before Craig Alpert learned to swim, and even to enjoy it.

Alpert, now 18, estimates that he’s spent nearly as much time in the water as he has on land. He has been swimming competitively with different clubs ever since he mastered his first strokes.

A four-year member of University High School’s swim team and a two-year varsity water polo player, Alpert’s aquatic experience has included serving as a swim coach for the Woodbridge Community Assn. for eight months and working for the association as a lifeguard since he turned 16.

He also has been giving swim lessons in Woodbridge since last summer.

“As a lifeguard, I was saving kids who didn’t know how to swim, so I thought, ‘Why not just teach them how to swim?’ ” said Alpert, who will attend the University of Arizona in the fall.

“Also, when you’re a lifeguard, you don’t get a chance to interact with the kids, you just get to watch pretty girls--just kidding, I mean, the water.”

He likes the job: “I enjoy coaching the kids because I’m so like them,” he said. “I never really left my childhood behind. I’m a kid at heart.”

Alpert did admit getting tired of swimming every once in a while, but he said his students, who range in age from 18 months to 18 years, keep him going.

“Every kid is different. They all have their own unique characteristics. I probably know all the kids in Woodbridge by name. . . . They’re also really entertaining. They try to get out of practice with unique excuses and try to con you into changing the workout into something more fun or easier.”

One of the few difficulties Alpert has encountered in teaching is something he was guilty of doing to make life miserable for his Blue Boy instructors.

“It’s really hard to teach a lesson when kids are screaming,” Alpert said. “Just recently I had a group lesson. One student got right in the water, but the other three sat on the side in the pool. When one started crying, it set off a chain reaction.”

Alpert, too, has had to ask parents to leave the pool site during lessons.

One student who has taken swimmingly to Alpert’s instruction is 6-year-old T.J. Rough, who says the lessons are fun.

“He’s really a nice man,” Rough said of Alpert. “He’s really good at teaching, and he knows that I’m having fun. I ask him if I can dive off the diving board, and he says I can.”

Marna Rough, T.J.’s mother, agrees with her son’s assessment.

“Craig is a great instructor, he’s very patient, very conscientious,” she said. “Luckily for us, my son’s never been scared of the water. He’ll say, ‘I know how to do that!’ and jump in (the water) any time. But don’t believe him; that’s why Craig is here to teach him.”

Alpert’s lifeguard and swim instructor jobs aren’t just fun in the sun. Both require a lot of responsibility, dedication and training. Alpert has taken courses in CPR, first aid and lifeguard training.

He can also teach others to be lifeguards, after obtaining his instructor’s certificate in April. Alpert began giving lessons this week.

Omar Dauod, head lifeguard for the Woodbridge Community Assn., said he chose Alpert to teach his candidates because of his “knowledge of lifeguarding and rescuing skills and his ability to relate to children of all ages, adults too. Also his performance--we’ve all heard good things about him.”

Once, Alpert had to use his skills as a lifeguard to save himself and a student during a swim lesson.

“I asked the student, who was 18 years old, to let go of the edge of the pool and show me what he could do, and the guy just sank, pulling me down with him. I had to push him off me because he grabbed me around the shoulders before I could pull him up.”

Despite a difficult moment or two, Alpert said, “If you like kids and water, this is the job for you.”