{"id":38231,"date":"2022-09-25T00:09:43","date_gmt":"2022-09-25T06:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-considers-rebuilding-lifeguard-program\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:42:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:42:57","slug":"cortez-considers-rebuilding-lifeguard-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-considers-rebuilding-lifeguard-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez considers rebuilding lifeguard program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=7281270e-2778-46fc-885f-351071830c73&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Swimmers take their mark at the Cortez Recreation Center in this archived photo. (Journal file photo)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Swimmers take their mark at the Cortez Recreation Center in this archived photo. (Journal file photo)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Cortez recreation director Creighton Wright on Tuesday, Sept. 13, told City Council he hopes to return the city rec center to full, pre-pandemic services and hours of operation.<\/p>\n<p>Many programs dropped off because of the coronavirus pandemic and staffing shortages, including swim lessons, the high school swim team and lifeguards.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to re-create our swim culture,\u201d Wright said.<\/p>\n<p>To bring back swim programs, the lifeguard program needs to be built back up, he said.<\/p>\n<p>To encourage more available lifeguards in the future, the Rec Center is looking into creating a junior lifeguard program to get more people interested in the job.<\/p>\n<p>The idea is that \u201ckids who are not old enough to be a lifeguard can start learning about what it is like to be a lifeguard, so ideally next year we have a crop of kids interested,\u201d Wright said.<\/p>\n<p>Various exercise classes at the Rec Center were also reduced or dropped because of the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>To coordinate more classes and instructors, Wright wants to bring back a facility manager position that had been previous cut. Developing drop-in youth programming is also needed at the Rec Center, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018We need to re-create our swim culture,\u2019 Creighton Wright says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83962,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38231\/revisions\/83962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38231"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}