People in the Ashcroft-area looking to escape the heat in the local pool can do so as there are now have enough staff in place.

Village administration were starting to sweat in April as there was the possibility that the facility on Elm Street was in danger of not opening this year because of a lack of lifeguards.

But Mayor Barbara Roden says there has been a renewed interest from young people wanting to be lifeguards.

“We’re trying to facilitate that by paying for the training that they need to take and the certification that they need so that hopefully they can come on board next year as junior lifeguards and work their way up,” Roden said.

“It is what always used to happen until COVID came and kind of threw a wrench into the machinery.”

Roden says the lack of training was largely due to the fact that a number of indoor pools were closed during the pandemic, meaning there were no new lifeguards to hire.

“You have to do a lot of training, you have to get a lot of certifications,” she said. “With the uncertainties around COVID some pools that really put a two year break in the supply chain of lifeguards, not just for us but for everyone.”

“It’s slowly reestablishing that sort of flow through where you train people as junior lifeguards at 16-17 and then by the time they go off to post secondary and maybe want to come back for summers, they’re senior lifeguards and maybe they’ve taken their certification so they can be instructors.”

Roden is hoping that the situation is back to normal, and that it won’t be as much as of a struggle to find lifeguards next year.