She is a 17-year-old national-caliber competitive surfer at San Clemente High School.
He is a 48-year-old veteran marathoner, triathlete, long-distance swimmer and canoeist.
Marissa Shaw and Steve Ayers, who both live in San Clemente, are first-year lifeguards this summer at the area’s three state beaches.
This morning, at an annual awards breakfast, Shaw and Ayers were up for Rookie of the Year honors with Shaw taking the title, polling the most votes from her lifeguard peers.
Shaw was presented with the Dana Ambrose Spirit Award, a rookie-of-the-year honor named for Dana Ambrose, who was Rookie of the Year in 1997 and was remembered as an inspiration following her death in 2000 at age 19 in a traffic accident that wasn’t her fault.
Shaw made the biggest jump this year, going from being a pool lifeguard last summer at San Clemente’s Ole Hanson Beach Club to trying out for an ocean-lifeguard position this spring, up against some 60 applicants, most of them men.
“Oh dude, there was a lot!” she said. “It was crazy. I don’t know how (I did it). It was just step by step. I just like made the swim. Then I made the run-swim-run. Then I made the interview. I took it day by day in training and made it. It was crazy.”
She started out working at Doheny State Beach, with its relatively calm waters, then moved over to San Clemente State Beach and to San Onofre State Beach, where at times she is assigned to a tower on remote beaches known as Trails.
“It’s so huge down there,” she said. “You’re basically alone. For almost the entire day you don’t see any other lifeguards. But it’s fun. I like it.”
Ayers, with an extensive background as a water-based athlete, had never worked in a lifeguard tower until this summer.
“I was making my kids do junior guards,” he said. “I told them that being a junior guard leads to the best job in the world, being a lifeguard. So my daughter said, ‘You know, Dad, it sounds like something you always wanted to do and never did.’ ”
He’s doing it part-time this summer, along with his commercial window-washing business and real estate broker’s license.
“I love it,” Ayers said. “I would actually pay to do this. I live by Riviera. I skateboard to work when I guard there. I’m kind of proud of that.”
