“It’s a rite of summer,” said Scott Barter as about 150 youngsters ages 9 through 15 gathered on “the mound” at Amagansett’s Indian Wells Beach Saturday morning, where they were welcomed by John Ryan Sr. and John Ryan Jr. to the 2019 junior lifeguard season.
“It’s a rite of passage too,” Barter continued, “for most of these kids will go on to become lifeguards.”
Junior lifeguard training is “not about the tournaments,” the younger Ryan said, “it’s not about being the fastest swimmer, but about building confidence when it comes to water safety issues and ocean awareness, about being able to recognize situations where someone might be in trouble.”
Tournaments, he said, were about excelling, “but here it’s about the group, about recognizing small successes and remembering that the group is as strong as its weakest link.”
Addressing the parents a few moments later, he urged them, first and foremost, to arrive on time each weekend morning, and not to hover, which tended, he said, “to result in children holding back and gravitating from the group. . . . Your child’s safety is our utmost concern and we will take very good care of them. Please trust us, and try to watch and enjoy from a distance.”
“Try” was really the key word, Ryan said to the kids. He and his some 40 instructors would not accept, “I can’t” as a reply to a challenge, but only “I will try.”
The ocean water, needless to say, was cold that day, though the elder Ryan, before departing for the Amagansett Beach Association that he manages next door, urged the kids to go for it. “What do you say when you go in?” he asked, cupping a hand to an ear.
“I’m lovin’ it!” came the reply.
“And what do you say when you’re coming out?”
“I thought it would be colder!”
Wetsuits, which, the younger Ryan said were “restrictive,” were discouraged, however, the use of sunblock was recommended, sunscreen’s chemicals having come into question of late, and the kids were encouraged to “stay hydrated throughout the day.”
And the program, which ends with competitions in early August, would not be weather dependent. “We don’t mind the rain,” said Ryan, adding that training would be called off only in extreme conditions. Along that line, he added, “We’ve suffered enough this spring — we deserve a good summer.”
As for hesitance, this writer, who stayed a while with the 31 9-year-olds and their instructors, Brian Cunningham, Finn McCormac, Andrey Trigubovich, Sean Knight, Jon Tarbet, and Eddie McDonald among them, didn’t see any sign of it. To the contrary, aligned in ranks for a relay, they repeatedly dashed into the ocean to tag instructors standing waist-deep in the sizable surf before running back up the beach to their teammates.
Asked how the water was, Charlie Maniaci said, eyes widened, “Very cold.”
“It’s not so cold,” said Eddie McDonald’s granddaughter, Zoe.
The alacrity with which the youngest of the junior lifeguards took to the ocean could be traced, Angelika Cruz said, to Haley Ryan and Vanessa Edwardes’s Nipper Guard instructional sessions for 6 through 8-year-olds at the Albert’s Landing and East Lake bay beaches in Amagansett and Montauk.
A flier promoting Nipper Guards, which was launched last year, says the instruction “will provide many of the same components the junior program offers, including swimming, running, paddleboarding, and marine and beach educational activities — water safety and awareness activities will be modified based on age and swimming abilities.”
A Nipper lifeguard tournament mirroring the junior lifeguard one scheduled for Aug. 3 and 4 is to be held at Albert’s Landing and at Amagansett’s Atlantic Avenue ocean beach on Aug. 1 and 2.
“It’s probably the most wonderful program I’ve ever seen,” Barter said as this writer passed by on his way up the beach. “The Ryans have been great. Johnny Ryan is absolutely amazing — teaching at the middle school, working with the Ocean Rescue Squad, and with the Fire Department. I don’t know how he does it. I don’t think he sleeps.”