Water, water, everywhere, and not a lifeguard to watch it? The American Lifeguard Association reported that up to 50% of pools across the U.S. could be facing lifeguard shortages from a pandemic’s worth of pool closures.
After taking a hit with the rest of the country, Denton’s facilities — Water Works Park, the Natatorium and Civic Center Pool — have made a successful post-COVID comeback thanks to wage increases and strategy changes.
“COVID really broke our industry pretty badly,” said Paul David Morgan, the city’s aquatics supervisor.
Public pools around the country typically rely on a cycle of returning already-certified lifeguards every season, Morgan said. When swimming pools closed to comply with COVID-19 safety guidelines and mandates in 2020, the cycle was disrupted.
“When a lot of pools shut down for a year, all those veterans went and found other jobs and then they never returned,” Morgan said.
The shutdowns also affected any incoming lifeguards, who could not be trained until the pools reopened. Lifeguard certifications through the American Red Cross are valid for only two years, so when the pools closed for the 2020 season, both new and returning lifeguards could not get their certifications in time for the next season.
Water Works and the Natatorium went into the pandemic with 110 returning lifeguards, aquatics manager Monica Martin said. When the pools were able to reopen in 2021 after a year of planning things day by day, only seven of those lifeguards came back.
While the pools were closed during the pandemic, some of the staff stayed on the payroll as the Civic Center Pool transformed into a relief station, Martin. People could use a trailer with a washing machine and dryer, water stations and showers.
“Everybody else was sitting on the stand for the first time ever at the beginning of last season,” Martin said. “It was a really difficult restart to this industry.”
The Denton City Council approved a pay raise for the lifeguards in March, bumping the salary up from $11 per hour to $15.50.
While it successfully drew in newcomers, the pay increase also encouraged some veteran lifeguards to return to their stands thanks to an additional 50 cents per year they’d worked, said Martin.
“If I had a guard who had been there since 2019, they actually started at $16.50,” she said.
Getting the extra bonus for returning staff involved a lot of effort and planning but was absolutely necessary, said Martin.
“We value our veterans, we need our veterans,” Martin said. “They’re the lifeblood of what we do.”
Other North Texas cities also raised lifeguard salaries in hopes to draw their veterans back to their stands. For example, after filling only 20 out of 80 open lifeguard positions, the Richardson Parks & Recreation Department raised lifeguard pay from $13.50 to $15 an hour, along with adding bonuses for working an entire season.
The experience veteran lifeguards have is invaluable for the stability of pools, especially when it comes to helping the “rookie guards,” Martin said.
“We need those rookie guards who are a little bit timid and scared of sitting up on a stand for the first time to look across the pool and see somebody who’s solid with experience,” she said. “It’s just part of the culture you’ve got to have.”
One of the seven original returners to Water Works was Hannah Hickman, now a pool manager and a student at Ouachita Baptist University in Alabama.
“This is the only place I’ve ever worked, but I think we have a really unique community,” Hickman said.
After starting on a swim team at 7 years old, then working as a lifeguard as a teenager and now in college learning how to run a pool of her own one day, leaving was not an option, Hickman said.
Even with a team of returners, the pandemic also forced pools to reconsider what running at “full strength” meant. Before, it was only accomplished in Denton with a lifeguard team of more than 200, Martin said. Now, Water Works and the Natatorium are at full strength with only 120.
“I told them at the hiring season 120 was the bare minimum in order for us to get back to what we did last year,” Martin said. “And that’s my new metric is what we did post-COVID — what did we do in 2021, not 2019.”
Having a smaller overall staff also helped pay for the raises the lifeguards got, Martin said.
“With us coming back from COVID and reducing the hours of operation by two hours per day, reducing the amount of staff by 50%, and that’s also staff budget, we got to save 50% of that budget, and it ended up being about $400,000,” she said.
Since coming back from the pandemic, the management was able to expand operating hours by a few hours, Martin said.
“We added back some additional hours at the Civic Center Pool — we expanded our hours early on Monday to Tuesday nights,” Martin said. “It’s a little growth in staff and a little growth in operations. We consider that a success.”
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