Welcome to our annual Best of Aquatics issue, where we honor 10 facilities that have demonstrated a commitment to excellence across operations, programming, training, and more.
The class of 2019 is exceptional in many ways. We had a record number of deserving entrants this year, making it difficult for judges to narrow the field to just 10. In the end, we wound up with several winners for two categories: Training and Targeted Programming.
I’d like to highlight training because it’s always one of the most competitive categories in this program. As you all know, training is vital to the success of an aquatics facility. The myriad ways in which this year’s winners implement effective and successful training are truly inspiring. Take Breckenridge Recreation Center, for example. Like so many other facilities, they had problems training and retaining lifeguards. So they took the proverbial bull by the horns, and built a written system from the ground up to help each guard learn necessary skills, eventually expanding it to include a peer review component. As a result, two guards from Breckenridge — Bailey Baldwin and Josh Groth — took top honors in two of the three events in our annual Summer Lifeguard Challenge.
Nozomi Aquatic Center also won for training. They were proud to submit a unique, one-day training event that’s been wildly successful in team building and communication, called a “Fun Run.” In it, the guards run 3.5 miles in two single-file lines and are given increasingly difficult tasks to perform during the run. The results are incredible — what normally would take a facility an entire season to drill into their guards is gained in a single in-service day.
Lastly, the City of Scottsdale Aquatics is doing its part to foster the next generation of leaders in this industry. They have devised a program to recognize and train promising guards into head guards, laying out a career path in aquatics and providing the necessary skills to eventually manage a facility.
All this from just one category! I invite you all to read about this year’s 10 honorees. There’s so much to learn from each of them.