The event<\/a>, which unfolds Wednesday through Friday, has brought together the largest group of competitors in its history.<\/p>\nThe four-day competition features over a dozen events, from beach sprints and team relays, to open-water swims and rescue board races.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the heroes that are sitting on your beaches every day \u2014 working, protecting, watching out for people \u2014 and, as you\u2019ve seen in the media lately, they are making heroic rescues when they got to go in,\u201d said event organizer Tom Gill.<\/p>\n
Organizers said that each event is specifically designed to test the speed, endurance and teamwork lifeguards rely on when lives are on the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Florida heat\u2019s pretty bad. We\u2019re not used to this, but it\u2019s an honor to represent Long Beach and be here and meet a lot of people, and it\u2019s a great time,\u201d said Long Beach, New York lifeguard Gavin Delgrosso.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an awesome thing to do; we get to compete against all these other patrols,\u201d said Long Beach, New York lifeguard Ryder Heitefuss.<\/p>\n
For the lifeguards, it\u2019s an oppurtunity to sharpen their skills, learn from each other and then take those techniques back to the communities they serve.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat ocean doesn\u2019t care about anything; it\u2019s gonna give you all it\u2019s got, so you got to be ready no matter what to perform your job, and so, this just keeps us on the grind and keeps us ready,\u201d said Deerfield Beach lifeguard Jillian Kenny.<\/p>\n
However, for many of the men and women who participate, the experience is more than just winning a national title.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a passion. There\u2019s no prizes, there\u2019s no money prizes for this. This is just from the heart, from the gut,\u201d said Kenny. \u201cIt\u2019s grit, it\u2019s grind, and we love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The competition will continue through Friday and is free for the public to watch.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/p>\n
\tJoin our Newsletter for the latest news right to your inbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) – Nearly 1,200 lifeguards from across the country have gathered on Fort Lauderdale Beach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-363598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}