County Offers Free Lifeguard Training to Fill Shortage

BY ALEXIS GUSTIN agustin@loudounnow.com

For anyone who has ever wanted to sit in the big chair at the local pool, tell kids to “stop running” and save lives, now is your chance to get certified to be a lifeguard at no cost.

Loudoun County is offering free lifeguard training for anyone who is 15 years and six months and older as it works to build its staffing back up across the county after COVID-19 prevented many lifeguards from recertifying and new ones from getting certified.

American Lifeguard Association Director of Health and Safety Bernard Fisher said the COVID-19 pandemic wiped the slate clean of available lifeguards across the country.

Once a person is certified as a lifeguard, that certification lasts two years. Then, usually a pool or municipality will pay to recertify lifeguards. Fisher said when COVID hit, lifeguards who needed to recertify couldn’t. On top of that, he said historically about 300,000 new lifeguards are certified each year. That meant 300,000 new guards couldn’t get certified during the pandemic.

To get out of that deficit, he said

600,000 lifeguards will need to be trained every year over the next two years.

Loudoun County Division Manager for Recreation Centers Jay Allred has spent 30

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Pastor Michelle C. Thomas, president of the NAACP Loudoun Chapter years in the aquatic industry, beginning as a lifeguard in 1986 and said lifeguard shortages have been around in the industry for years, but the recent shortage as a result of COVID might be the worst.

He said basically an entire generation of lifeguards are missing as a result of the pandemic.

When businesses started opening back up, owners had to get creative to bring people back. That included aquatic centers. They not only needed to get patrons back, but they needed to have enough lifeguards to watch over the pools.

Loudoun County Aquatics Manager Michael Skarke said it wasn’t that people weren’t interested in lifeguarding, but that it took a long time to develop training that took into consideration COVID safety protocols.

“In that time frame everyone’s certifications expired, and when people went back looking for work they found different avenues, so it left everybody kind of just down in the dumps on that side,” he said. “The country is trying to figure out how we bring them back.”

LIFEGUARD SHORTAGE continues on page 42