32 Passed Ocean Lifeguard Test
Other than the 35 lifeguard trainees who had shown up for what John Ryan Sr. calls “the Joe Dooley test,” which, if they passed, would certify them as ocean lifeguards, there weren’t many at the Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett Sunday morning.
Presumably because the water was cold; though, as Ryan and his son John Jr. said later, at 60 degrees it was much warmer than the frigid 49-degree surf into which they had plunged the day after Memorial Day at the Maidstone Club, where John McGeehan and Brian Cunningham trained them during the weeks leading up to Sunday’s demanding test.
All but three of the 35 passed, having successfully made individual and group rescues 100 to 125 yards offshore — with rescuers, once having packed a victim up onto the beach, rushing back out to play the role of a victim — after which everyone took part in a 300-yard endurance swim whose top finishers were Cecilia De Havenon and Marikate Ryan, East Hampton High School sophomores who are on the varsity girls swim team.
While John Ryan Sr., the senior member of the Hampton Lifeguard Association, which in association with the East Hampton Town Recreation Department trained the test-takers, beginning with freestyle stroke work at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter in March, said the endurance swim was “not a race,” his son, John Jr., who heads up the town’s ocean lifeguard staff, said, “Well, they say it’s not a race, but it is.”
John Jr. said the extremely high pass percentage was owing to the instruction McGeehan and Cunningham provided. As for those three who did not pass, “they’ll get another chance on Monday,” he said. And that would be it as far as ocean tests go here, he added, except for recertification tests in August.
“The Maidstone Club’s generosity over the years has been huge,” McGeehan said. “It’s much appreciated. We use the club’s pool, its locker rooms, and the beach there. . . . The first two weeks the trainees wear wetsuits, in the third week they don’t.”
“It was a beautiful ocean on test day, though the conditions were rough and the water was much colder in the days that led up to it,” McGeehan said.
The list of those who passed — all of whom John Ryan Jr. said he expects to be subsequently hired — comprises: Robert Anderson III, Aiaz Ansari, Alexa Berti, Theodore J. Calabrese III, Dylan Camacho, David Carman, Chloe Collette-Schindler, Benjamin Connors, Cecilia De Havenon, Alexandra Ebel, Charlotte Evans, Jennings Fantini.
Harvey P. Foulser, Corey Gilroy, Alyssa Kneeland, Britteny L. Krzyzewski, James McMahon, Nicholas McMahon, Joseph Mench, Jorge Naula, Hannah Pell, Brian Platt, Sean Romeo, Marikate Ryan, Timothy Squires, Nicholas Tulp, William R. Vargas, Vincent Vigorita, William Weinlandt, Robert Weiss, Andrew Wilson, and Lauren M. Zaino.
John Ryan Sr., who has made it a mission over the years to assure that “every kid in this town is drown-proof,” said he was particularly impressed by Berti’s performance in one of the individual rescues. “You know, it’s the luck of the draw as to who you get as a victim. Hers was 50 pounds heavier than she was.
“More than that,” said John Jr. “Seventy-five pounds heavier.”
“Anyway,” said the elder Ryan, “she struggled mightily to get him up the beach to where the lifeguard stand is after she’d brought him to the water’s edge. Then she had to turn right around and swim out to be the victim. I thought she’d swim out slowly, but she was so thrilled that she’d done it that she flew out there. The torp rescue that she did is the second of the four events — it’s generally considered that if you can do that one you’ve crunched it. . . . I was thrilled with the quality and quantity of the kids who took the test.”
There was also one adult, 49-year-old Brian Platt, a Southamptoner and father of a junior lifeguard here who, Ryan said, had wanted to work as a volunteer. “You can do that — Steve Brierley and Mike Forst have — but only if you’re a certified ocean guard. He was phenomenal. I remember when he was in the Y’s pool in March he said, ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this,’ but he came every day for the still-water training, twice a week, and he did it.”
And now the question becomes where along the beach will these new guards work. Ocean lifeguard pay varies considerably here. Gurney’s Inn, for instance, pays $18 an hour, East Hampton Village pays $15, and East Hampton Town $13.50.