S&PAProfessional / Spring 2020
IN DEPTH PROFILE
By Dean Gurden
MERITED SUCCE SS Andy Ebben says receiving an honour from Queen Elizabeth II is recognition for the whole swim and leisure industry’s journey, from humble beginnings to an innovative future ndy Ebben FCIMSPA has recently been awarded the British Empire Medal in recognition of 30 years’ service to swimming pool safety. Ask him how he feels about being a recipient and, as well as saying how humbled he is, Ebben will mention all the help he’s had along the way from colleagues and associates. He probably includes his younger sister in that list. It was back in 1975, when Ebben was fresh out of the Army, living in Edinburgh and wondering what to do with himself, that she suggested he take a walk along to the Royal Commonwealth Pool and see if he could get a job. There’s a bit of luck involved in most successful careers and it just so happened that a lifeguard had left the day before and there was a vacancy. Ebben was interviewed and promptly offered the job. His mother wasn’t too happy, bearing in mind this was a young man who had gone through public school and Sandhurst, been an officer in the British Army, and would now be wandering up and down a swimming pool for a living, but it was a lifechanging moment.
“It was the best thing I ever did,” he says. “I worked there for two years, qualified as a swimming teacher and then, early in 1977, my boss called me in and said ‘You can’t be doing pool duty all your life – you need to go to university and get yourself a degree’.” So off he went to Loughborough University and did a sports science degree, followed by a postgraduate teaching qualification. It was while teaching for two years in Cyprus that he wrote a training manual for the Cypriot police on water rescue. “They had no training materials, but what they did have was a fairly big drowning problem,” Ebben says. “I had to send my manuscript to the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) to get it agreed, and when I returned to the UK I was offered a job as development officer at the Society.” Unfortunately, it was a government-funded post and the money dried up eventually. Thankfully for Ebben, a college friend who was head of swimming management for Birmingham City Council got in touch to mention that the council was going through a swimming pools review, and his skillset was just what they were looking for.
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