Lifesavers train for Advanced Lifeguard Award

THE READINESS IS ALL: Former Waikanae Surf Life Saving Club member Ashleigh Hurring (left) has been selected to be one of a team of highly-qualified surf lifesavers who will train 19 candidates in an advanced lifeguard award training intensive at New Plymouth’s Fitzroy Beach next month. She is pictured on her home beach in this file picture with Andrew Sheldon.

FORMER Waikanae Surf Life Saving Club member Ashleigh Hurring casts a watchful eye over lifeguards learning how to jump out of helicopters and participate in major search and rescues involving emergency services.

The lifeguards are training for the Advanced Lifeguard Award, and Hurring is part of a team of instructors and mentors who have all previously earned it. The team will take 19 candidates through the Advanced Lifeguard Award training intensive at New Plymouth’s Fitzroy Beach next month.

Run by Surf Life Saving New Zealand’s National Lifeguard School and held annually, the intensive combines theory with practical and scenario-based activities that include working around wave-beaten rocks to make a rescue.

“Candidates who do the course have got all the previous qualifications,” Hurring said.

“This is the final qualification. It’s at the top of the ladder. Candidates in the course get involved in search and rescue scenarios.”

Hurring completed the course two years ago as a Waikanae Surf Life Saving Club member. Once qualified, the surf lifesavers can step onto any beach and run the job, she said.

As a Bachelor of Pharmacy undergraduate at Otago University, Hurring joined Dunedin’s St Clair Surf Life Saving Club. For her internship in her fifth and final year of study, she is back in Gisborne working at a pharmacy and plans to stay on there.

She now looks forward to mentoring at the Advanced Lifeguard Award intensive.

Surf lifesaving is a passion, she said.

“We live for it. You continue to grow with it. This course continues candidates’ education to be better lifeguards.”