Pre-wave pool sessions are tense affairs for both regulars and first-timers. Pulses quicken, breathing gets rapid and a field of doubts enters everyone’s mind. If you could hear the collective thoughts of surfers assembled on the artificial turf during the safety briefing, it would be choral variations of “I won’t mess up. No messing up. Wait, what did the lifeguard say?”
Thankfully, Atlantic Park Surf’s Yasmin Brown has come up with a creative beach orientation solution.
During WavePoolMag’s last visit to Virginia Beach, we sessioned several times with Yasmin doing the safety briefing. She cut everyone’s pre-session nerves with a few well-placed anecdotes and laughs. In this interview, Yasmin talks about the foundations of effective lifeguarding and the unique challenges of supervising a surf lagoon. As a bonus, she ventures into the contributions Atlantic Park has brought to Virginia Beach’s legacy surf culture.
What do you do here? What’s your job title?
So I’m a shore guard, but I’m also one of the supervisors here at the lagoon. As a shore guard, I really just do those briefings to make sure the guys know all the safety precautions before they enter the lagoon. I do my scanning during the sessions. We rotate, we help out the reef host, answer guest questions, and just make sure everybody’s moving throughout the lagoon safely.
How long have you been lifeguarding and where did you learn?
About six years. I started in Christiansburg, Virginia, at the Rosa Peters Playground. That is a privately owned pool, but it’s for the community. It started out with two dollars for kids to get in, three dollars for adults to get in. On Wednesdays, if you bring a can of food, you get in for free. We also did loans, so we would have other guests put in money for other guests that may not be able to afford it, and we would put money in to let some guests have a week of free swimming.
I really enjoyed my time there. We did a summer program right before the kids went to school. We would have backpacks filled with supplies, do haircuts, braid the girls’ hair, and then everybody was swimming for free. We would cook.
I worked there for the majority of my lifeguarding experience. Then I moved on to Sublime Aquatics. When I moved to Norfolk, Virginia, I doubled as a lifeguard and a pool tech to an extent where I tested the pH every couple of hours, with cleaning in the mornings before I would start my shift, vacuuming, skimming, taking trash out.
This has by far been my favorite place to guard at just with how versatile it is, how pleasant the guests are, how well everyone within each department gets along with each other. You don’t feel hesitant or timid to talk to anybody or ask questions. Everybody’s excited to see you when you come in. We have a lot of staff who make it easy to come to work, which is hard in this day and age, where it’s hard to find a good place to fit in sometimes.
It’s important to enjoy what you do, and it sounds like you have a good team here.
Definitely. I have never had a job where I’ve genuinely gotten along with everyone, including my bosses. They’re not power hungry, so they’re not expecting you to do things that they wouldn’t do. They’re not expecting you to work like a robot. They do a great job of letting the guards know if you need us to tap you out so you can get some water, use the bathroom, do anything to make you more comfortable and keep you alert and scanning the water to your best efficiency. They will do what they have to do to make sure that everybody is able to work comfortably. It’s amazing.
Talk about the difference. Lifeguarding at a wave pool versus the community pool.
The approach is different. You do still want to go in thinking that nobody knows how to swim, just so that you are ready for anything. A lot of lifeguarding is preventative. The difference is that there are a lot more moving parts here than there are at a standard water facility. You have the waves running. You have people on their own flotation devices. You have a lot more in that briefing that you have to include. You have concrete surrounding it and gallons of water pushing it around this lagoon.
What you’re thinking about as a guard is a lot different. You’re not really thinking about, “Let me stop you from running. Let me stop you from doing the breath-holding challenge. Let me stop you all from playing horse or whatever in here.” It’s more so, “Let me look for how this guy falls. Let me look for how he’s paddling. Does he look fatigued? Does he look like his shoulder’s hurting? Does he look like he’s limping as he’s walking through the lagoon?”
You’re looking for signs of, are they okay? Are they trying to tough it out? Can I call them in just to check on them? What’s going on? Does everybody have their jersey on correctly? It’s just a lot of different aspects that you’re looking for. But overall, the preventative aspect of the guarding is all the same. You just want to make sure you’re always catching things three steps ahead so that whatever could have happened does not happen.
You did the orientation at two of my sessions, and I have to hand it to you because you were very complete. I’ve heard some lifeguards say that it’s hard to stick to the script.
I try my best to. I do vary it, but I keep all the information the same so that guests who may have multiple sessions a day are not hearing the same exact spiel every time they come around. I’ll try to mix it up because I understand people who have been here multiple times seldom want to come to the briefing anyway. So if you can make it more interesting, maybe make them laugh a little bit. If you throw a joke in, it makes people want to actually come and get that information.
I think it’s very important. No matter how many times you go to the wave pool, that you go to that briefing because we change things. We could always add something to the briefing. We could always take something out. It’s very important for you to be there to know everything that we may have changed about that briefing, as well as you may have something that you’ve experienced in the lagoon another day that you could also add to the briefing.
I’ve had a guest say, “Hey, watch out for your toes. My toe got caught in the fence.” So then we started adding, “Hey, make sure you stay six feet away from that machine so you don’t get caught in it. It’s also very loud. It may throw you off your game.” Despite the liability of it, I just think it’s always good to get a refresher. Whether you’ve been there thirty times, whether you’ve been there ten times, just refresh your memory so you know you’re getting in there and you know what you’re doing and you know you’re safe.
What advice would you give someone wanting to work in the wave pool space?
Just be open to learning. Be open to feedback. No one here is ever going to come at you sideways or give you feedback in an attempt to hurt your feelings. It’s always just to make us work more smoothly as a team, as a unit. Just have an open mind. We also like to have fun in here. Have a switch so you know when it’s time to have fun, but also know when it’s time to lock in and be very serious.
While it is a very fun facility to be in and very fun to work at, we do have very serious things that can happen here. It’s very good to make sure you can rein it in when it’s needed, to know that it’s time to get serious. It’s time to lock down and really take care of business.
For the most part, as long as you have an open mind, you’re willing to learn, you’re willing to grasp new skills and get better. Even stepping into a staff session, they’re always going to push you to want to surf. It’s a surf lagoon. Just be open. Be open for everything. Teach yourself, teach others, pick up on notes. I pick up a lot from the surfers and other staff here. I learn a lot of the surfing terminology that I didn’t know.
Don’t be closed off just because you feel like, “I feel singled out if I don’t know this.” Ask questions. Always ask questions. There are so many moving parts. If you don’t ask questions, you may get lost somewhere within that process. Just always be open.
What does the wave pool mean to Virginia Beach? There’s an entrenched surf culture here. There’s a vibrant arts culture. There’s the big naval base. How does all that blend?
I see it as Virginia finally having waves, which we’ve heard from so many guests. It makes a lot more sense now that I’ve seen the difference between the oceanfront and what we offer to the locals here. A lot of the locals here participate in competitions. They go to camps. They may be a counselor at another surf camp. We’ve had some guests come in just to learn skills to take somewhere else.
I think it’s a great opportunity to come in and freshen your skills, learn something new, learn how to surf if you want to, and maintain the skill set that you have, which you may not be able to do all the time at the oceanfront. You may not always want to drive out to OBX to surf. Not everybody wants to wake up very early in the morning, drive, and then maybe catch one wave after four hours when you have a facility that will give you consistent good waves that you can practice with and have fun with.
The energy is always going to be positive. You never feel like, “I can’t go in there today. They’re not so nice on Wednesdays.”
I feel like we offer a nice community for a lot of people to reunite as well. I’ve seen a lot of older surfers come in and say, “Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen him in twenty years.” That is such a great feeling, to know that we’re providing that for a lot of people, for them to come and surf with their buddies. A lot of people come and bring their families. I’ve seen a lot of people bring their family into their interests, which is always nice.
It’s a good feeling around, just seeing everybody happy to be here. I feel like we give a very positive and enlightened facility for people of Virginia Beach to come in. There aren’t many places like that around here, but they have been popping up more frequently. I do feel like this is one of those places where no matter where you are surfing-wise, you’re going to have a good time. You’re going to forget about those stresses for those fifty-five minutes.
I’m glad that we can offer that to the locals and those who are not locals. People fly out from everywhere to come here. I’m just glad we can provide that to people. It’s just an escape, a little escape.
