Usually when children attend a summer camp, they make crafts and play games. But the children attending the Wrightsville Beach Ocean Rescue camp this summer learned a much more valuable skill: saving lives.
In the first year of the program, the July 20–24 WBOR camp filed all 30 spots for the program within a few weeks, said camp director and Wrightsville Beach lifeguard Lindsey Gerkens.
“We just did a week this year to try it out and see how it goes, and see if we have enough interest,” she said. “We’d like to keep expanding the program throughout more of the summer so we can get more kids involved.”
On July 23, the fourth day of the program, the campers were already anticipating re-enrolling next year.
“I want to do this [camp] every year until I’m 17!” 11-year-old Lawton Mayo said, standing in the sand with her friends, 11-year-old Kajsa Andersson and 11-year-old Lizzie Broadfoot. At age 18, the girls want to try out for the Wrightsville Beach Ocean Rescue squad.
Gerkens said she was excited to help inspire the children, as she herself was when she first enrolled in an ocean rescue camp at 14 years old.
“I never imagined that I would ever be a lifeguard,” she admitted. “I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to do it!’”
After completing the program she changed her mind.
“And 14 years later, I’m still out here doing it,” she said.
WBOR’s junior lifeguard program was structured to combine physical tests like swimming and running with instruction on proper lifesaving techniques. Each day’s lessons and activities built on what the children learned the day before, Gerkens said.
“It’s baby steps,” she said. “The first day we practiced just running into the water and how to get through the surf, and the second day we added buoys … so now how would you get through the surf with a lifeguard buoy using the skills you learned the first day, that sort of thing.”
Mike Carter said his 10-year-old son Owen Carter was nervous about swimming in the open ocean, but by Thursday he and the other campers were able to complete a swim all the way around Crystal Pier.
“It’s a huge confidence builder,” Carter said.
After Thursday’s swim, the kids learned cardiopulmonary resuscitation and practiced stabilizing a patient with a spinal cord injury and applying a tourniquet above an arm laceration. Friday, each child was assigned to sit alongside a guard in one of the beach’s 13 lifeguard stands for two hours to learn what the job entails on a daily basis.
“It’s a great opportunity for the kids to better understand what lifeguards actually do here on the island,” Kajsa Andersson’s mother Beverly Andersson said. “It’s not glamorous; it’s a pretty tough job.”
Andersson said many of her daughter’s friends who live on the island also enrolled in the program because regardless of whether they aspire to be lifeguards, learning water safety is invaluable to those who play in the ocean frequently. Two summers ago, she said, six children who lived on her street were swept out to sea with only one boogie board between them but because one of the kids had completed a lifeguard program, he was able to take charge of the situation.
“[Learning these skills] gives them the confidence so they don’t panic and they can react to emergency situations,” said John Buechele, whose 10-year-old son Fischer Buechele was among the Wrightsville Beach children taking part. “They might save one of their buddy’s lives or a stranger’s life sometime in their lifetime.”
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