For two days, six ocean rescue teams across four states competed on Easton’s Beach in tests of aquatic endurance and speed in individual and team events, relays and rescue simulations. The 43rd Newport Invitational Lifeguard Tournament on July 22-23 marked its second year back in Newport after a seven-year hiatus.
Men and women from Easton’s Beach and Middletown’s Sachuest Beach squads represented the elite lifeguards of Aquidneck Island, while patrols from New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut traveled to Newport from their respective states.
Challenges included running, swimming, boat rowing, paddling on boards, long-distance endurance swim, and rescue simulation events and displayed several life-saving abilities. Long Beach Township took first place; Easton’s Beach followed in second.
Team captains were prudent to devise strategy, identifying which athlete was best suited for which competition, when to take risks, and when to exercise caution if holding onto a lead.
The competition works on a point system, accruing scores over both days. “You need a strategy over each event and within events,” George Clarke, 55-year-old lifeguard from Long Beach Township, New Jersey, said. “It’s based on where you are in the pack.”
The veteran of 30 years has competed in Newport a dozen times. This year, he took on the three-person boat relay, where his teammates pushed his boat out from shore before he rowed around a set of buoys.
“This is really a vacation for me; we never turn the invitation down,” he said. “The events are really well run.”
The competition not only highlights the camaraderie and skillset necessary for beach rescue but the toughness it requires. And the ocean conditions, on day one of the competition, spared no difficulty.
Middletown’s Sachuest Beach lifeguard John Bonee recounted battling waves upwards of eight feet during his 880-yard swim from shore and back in the run-swim-run event on the first day.
“I swam out, and the waves were pushing me,” Bonee said. “You constantly had to be looking at the waves and trying to get through.”
After that event they pared back the distances. Bonee said the run-paddle-run event saw multiple competitors fail to finish, unable to navigate the conditions from their boards.
“The ocean is unpredictable,” Clarke said.
“Last year it was perfect conditions,” Bonee said.
The patrol at Sachuest Beach spends 30 minutes each day working out in groups, maintaining strength, endurance, and teamwork. “Most lifeguard programs have a workout program, swimming and running,” Bonee said.
Each lifeguard completes the Red Cross-certified First Aid, CPR and AED lifesaving course. On Aquidneck Island, the lifeguards must pass a 440-yard swim, buoy and line rescue, and a paddle rescue.
The showcase has served as an ode to these commitments since 1977, when Sachuest and Bailey’s Beach lifeguard, Ray Mey, started the competition. In its first year, the tournament saw 12 teams encompassing more than 150 lifeguards from as far south as Atlantic City.
Quickly, the invitational was recognized as the most competitive lifeguard competition on the East Coast. Although Mey left Newport just a year later, the tournament remains. “It is wonderful that this event has kept going all these years,” Mey said.