Chelsea Andrews keeps telling herself this is her last summer as a lifeguard at Juniper Hill Pool.

Then again, she thought the summer before was going to be her last - and the summer before that.
"Every single time I've taken another job, I've always regretted it," said Andrews, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Kentucky.

"I've always wished I had been working at the pool instead, and it just ends up that I do."

Nearing the end of her sixth summer, Andrews is currently the longest tenured guard at Juniper Hill.
She started working at the pool in high school at age15 and has been a head guard the past three years.

"It's a fun job to have because you work with your friends, you get to be outside and you get to be around people all the time," Andrews said. "I really like being around people."

"People" at the community pool oftentimes translates to "water-wild kids." On a sunny weekday in July about 75 kids swam and splashed in three separate swimming areas, enjoying the water while older adolescents and adults worked on their tan.

Four lifeguards, split between the main pool, the diving well and the baby pool, observed the scene from their posts above.

Andrews, sporting a red two-piece swimsuit and a bronze tan, said keeping swimmers safe is the number one priority of the guards.

"A lot of times there will be a lot of horseplay and stuff," Andrews said. "We have to regulate that.
"We want them to still be able to have fun, but you have to be safe about it, too."

Andrews said the only time she's ever had to pull a kid out of the water in her lifeguarding career was in the baby pool.

"That's the place that actually makes me the most nervous because those itty-bitty kids that will fall over can't push themselves back up," she said.

Growing up poolside

Water safety is something Andrews knows. As a former member of the Frankfort Area Swim Team and Western Hills High School swim team, Andrews practically grew up in the water.

Her mother, Mary Beth, a special education teacher, recalled the daily drive to the pool, the evening swims at Kentucky State University and the summers at Juniper Hills.

Andrews said her best events were the 50-meter freestyle and 100-meter breaststroke.

"Breaststroke was my main stroke that I've swam ever since I was about 10," Andrews said.

Although she doesn't swim competitively anymore, Andrews has become something of a coach for young swimmers.

She has been teaching swim lessons since she was 12 years old, first as a member of FAST and then as a lifeguard at Juniper Hill. In fact, teaching was one of the first things that drew Andrews to becoming a guard.

According to her mother, Andrews has wanted to be a lifeguard since the age of seven when she saw her older cousin teaching her younger sister, Caitlin, how to swim.

"That's when she decided she wanted to be a lifeguard," her mother said.

Making a splash with her students

Taryn and Camden Ritchie are like lots of 6-year-old kids near water: fearless one minute, shaking in their swimsuits the next.

As he watched his twin sister put her arms over her head and roll into the water, Camden could hardly wait to attempt the new technique.

"Let me try!" he pleaded to Andrews, who has been teaching the pair to swim from scratch since the beginning of the summer.

But when it was his turn to go, Camden had second thoughts. "No," he said, "I'm not even going to get back in the water."

"Yes, you are," replied the instructor. And he did, kicking his feet in the air while submerged.

"She's great at swim lessons," Andy Durcholz, a Juniper Hills lifeguard the past five summers, said, "especially with getting younger kids to get in the water. Other guards don't like to do it, but she has been here so long she knows how to deal with it."

When Taryn and Camden started swim lessons they were still using floatation devices. Now, under Andrews' tutelage, they are jumping off the diving board and swimming to the ladder.

"The best part of teaching swim lessons is the progression you get to see with them," Andrews said. "And you become so close to the kids."

Andrews said she has been giving swim lessons for so long " nearly half her life " people trust her with their kids.

Watching Andrews work with the twins, Louise Ritchie, the pair's mother, said she has been impressed by the way her kids have become attached to Andrews.

"They have just taken up with her so well," Ritchie said. "She's really easy going and encourages them."
But with the demands of school increasing next summer, Taryn and Camden may very well be two of Andrews' last pupils.

Every moment counts

Like an aging professional athlete, Andrews said she understands the difficulty of moving on from a job she enjoys and in which she excels.

The "real world" beckons, however.

Next summer, she is planning on getting an internship related to her major, merchandising apparel and textile design, before moving on to graduate school.

Then again, she has tried to walk away before.

"I am saying this is my last summer, but I said two summers ago that this is my last summer," Andrews said.

Staying close to home has taken on renewed importance for Andrews since her father, Wes, a former car salesman in Frankfort, was diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy, a neurological disorder.

"Things that we would be able to do really easily like speak and walk, those are the things that are slowly shutting down," she said.

"Eventually, someone will have to be there all the time to take care of him. It makes me want to be home more."

Andrews said she doesn't dwell on the time the disorder may rob from her father, but focuses on the time she has today with him.

"It makes me miss when I was younger, but I wouldn't trade it even now," she said. "The time we have now, I have to make the most of."

That philosophy could also be applied to Andrews' time at the pool, where she said she has become the wise, veteran leader seemingly overnight.

"I've seen kids who I used to teach swim lessons become lifeguards now," she said.

"We have quite a handful of kids that I've seen every year since they were 6, so now they're 12 and it's really weird. I've been here for so long, I've seen them all grow up."