Swim 800 meters in less than 14 minutes; run 1.5 miles in less than 12 minutes; and swim 1,000 meters, run 1,000 meters and paddle board 1,000 meters in less than 30 minutes. Also, train for at least 30 minutes a day swimming or paddle boarding.
Can you do it? If so, you might be an advanced certified beach safety lifeguard.
“Some of these guys have rescued 30 people in an eight hour shift, so you can’t get tired,” said Beach Safety Chief Joe D’Agostino.
In Destin, there are about 60 active lifeguards. Some of whom are even from other countries — specifically
“My whole family did it [worked as a lifeguard], so it’s kind of a tradition really,” Irwin said.
To keep the moral and motivation of the group of lifeguards up, D’Agostino and his team travels to competitions to see how they compare to other lifeguards across the country. In the past five years, the lifeguards of Destin finished in the top three groups in the nation — winning state last year and coming in second at nationals.
“You have to be really, really fit," D’Agostino said.
But when the lifeguards aren’t training or competing, they are saving lives. Right now, they work split shifts where one group will be on duty from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. and another group will be on duty from 10:45 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Most people may recognize Prebble Ramswell as a city councilwoman, but as a lifelong swimmer, she is just as comfortable behind the dais as she is the Gulf waters.
“We really are the number one first responders to anything happening in the water," Ramswell said.
While most beachgoers see the lifeguards as the people riding around on four-wheelers or sitting high above others at their stations, this group of caring and fit individuals are there to save anyone who needs help.
“They don’t see the scary side and the crazy side that does exist in this profession,” said D’Agostino.
Most of the incidents the lifeguards help out are people caught in rip currents, but the number of incidents varies based on the weather and beach conditions.
“The worst year we had for rescues was actually 2010. We did 333, but it was also the year we had the least amount of people on the beach because of the oil spill. Everyone was so concerned about the oil, they didn’t really pay attention to beach conditions," D’Agostino said.
“The beach, the Gulf, is a completely different beast from a swimming pool… Half the time we are rescuing people who know how to swim but don’t know how to read the Gulf,” said Ramswell.
But D’Agostino and a few other lifeguards agree that the hardest part of the job is trying to keep the public informed.
“If you have a bunch of bad conditions over a persistent amount of time, you feel like a broken record, and it is difficult sometimes to maintain that consistency because you get frustrated,” D’Agostino said.
But becoming a lifeguard is not impossible. The minimum to become a lifeguard is a 42-hour training course and the ability to swim 500 meters in 10 minutes or less.
Every year, about 20 people apply to be lifeguards, but only about 10 make the cut.
“It is pretty intense,” said D’Agostino. “If you think you are a good swimmer, keep swimming.”