Winning the League!

Stephen was a lifeguard in the early eighties and is now Head of Service in a Local Authority.

"Back in 1984 I took a summer job in the local leisure centre to make some money after I finished university. It was for me just a stop-gap and I had no intention then of staying within the industry for over 30 years.

Anyway - I got caught up in the whole atmosphere of a quickly developing career but did do my time on poolside.

When I joined it was just at the start of a new “league” season - which ran from September through to the following August - so my name went onto the “table”.

What was the league table for? Well it was for the most rescues in a year - which the same guy had “won” for the past 5 years.

There was none of this “reaching or throwing” stuff back then no matter what our Swimming Teacher taught us - Bronze Medallion back then, no TA’s - so if someone was in difficulty - in you went!

Myself and another big lad 6’ 4” were fairly level pegged for about 6 months - I seem to recall about 4 or 5 each. We did a lot of double shifts then.

I started to think outside the box a little and pondered how I could get ahead in the “race” - so I formulated a “cunning plan”.

I would no longer try to prevent anything occurring or an incident developing by intervention — blowing my whistle and/or shoutingI would let it “develop” and then see the day!!

It worked quite well actually!

My “rescues” started to increase as I watched the younger kids edge down to the deep-end - me pretending not to watch them - they got into difficulty and I dived in straight from the chair - rescued the child and got my allotted 2 hours off poolside to reassure the victims and parents - get dried off - get a coffee and fill in the paperwork AND the league table of course.

I got my comeuppance one day - of course I did!

Three sisters - aged 7 to 10 (and i still remember their names -Julie, Elaine and Linda) decided to have a go down the very short slide which dropped you in at a depth of 1.2metres. Julie and Elaine were well able and had seen them many times before going down and getting safely to the side. Young Linda could swim - but had never tried the slide OR even been out of her depth!

So the 1st two sisters went down and spent 5-10 minutes coaxing the youngest to let go of the top of the slide and come on down.

Well as the 2 sisters treaded water (they couldn’t stand) down came Linda and down she went!!

She broke the surface and totally panicked.

Grabbing the middle sister she dragged her down, she then grabbed the eldest sister and under she went too.

I couldn’t believe it - triple rescue - triple points and in I went!

I honestly think I would have received less injuries if someone had put me into a bag of angry wild cats!

Even though I could stand - I was scratched to bit and kicked in places I didn’t want to be - at one point I thought I was going to need rescuing!

I walked them to the side of the pool and they were lifted out by my fellow lifeguard (no deck level pools then) and I eased my bleeding and bruised body from poolside in to the First Aid room for medical attention!!

Lesson learned for sure.

Even though with hindsight - this mad competition probably did keep us awake more on poolside after a 2 1/2 hour stint in the same place and it probably did make us much more aware of developing incidents - it certainly taught us all that prevention is way better than cure!"

footnote - that was my last full year as a Lifeguard - I “won” the league by three and then got promoted into junior management where my first action was to ban the league!!