60 www.ReadMPM.com | www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.MountPleasantPodcast.com If you’ve ever spent time at the beach, you’ve probably noticed the lifeguards before anything else. Up in the stand. Watching the water. Not saying much. From a distance, it can look like the kind of job where not a lot is happening. Gary Boone hears that assumption often. Boone, a member of The Citadel’s Class of 2027, has been working ocean rescue for six seasons now – three years as a lifeguard and three as a supervisor. Long enough that the beach feels familiar in a way most people don’t really understand unless they’ve been part of it day after day. He didn’t exactly stumble into it either. It started earlier, when he was younger and paying attention to the lifeguards he saw every summer. “I was inspired by some of my friends’ older brothers who were lifeguards,” Boone said. “The Junior Lifeguard program played a huge role too.” Back then it was more about looking up to them than understanding what they actually did. A typical day starts long before the beach feels like the beach. Before umbrellas, before coolers, before families even begin deciding where to sit, the lifeguards are already working through a routine that doesn’t change much but matters every time. Stands are opened. Equipment gets checked. Everything is laid out and checked again. It sounds simple until you think about what it means if something doesn’t work later. Because later is when it matters. Then comes training. Every day. For about an hour in the morning, the team runs drills, practices rescues and works through scenarios. Even after that, during breaks, it doesn’t really stop. There’s still mixed-in training, conversations about technique, staying ready. That part surprises people the most, Boone said. “People think we don’t do much,” he said. “But we’re constantly training, constantly preparing.” The thing most beachgoers never see is how much of the job is about preventing anything from happening in the first place. Most good lifeguarding doesn’t look like anything at all from the beach. A conversation that keeps someone out of a dangerous area. A swimmer who gets redirected before they realize they were drifting. Small moments that never turn into emergencies. From the stand, though, the focus is constant. You’re not just looking at water. You’re reading it. Watching how it moves. Watching how people move inside it. Who looks fine. Who BY CARI LAWSON Keeping You SAFE Day in the life of a lifeguard All Photos By Rachel Basye, Cooper River Photography
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