INDIANAPOLIS — With summer break well underway, Indy Parks announced another pool is now open for the season.
Northwestway Park Pool opened Thursday, making it the eighth Indy Parks pool to open for the season.
Thatcher Park Pool on Indy's west side opened June 4.
That's where Antwan Monroe is spending another season as a lifeguard.
"I've been with Parks for about six years now," said Monroe. "This is my seventh summer."
Logan Wong also works as a lifeguard at Thatcher Park, where it takes a team just to open the pool every day.
"Here, we have two rotations," said Wong. "We have roving, which is just walking back and forth, and then sitting in the chair. Those are 20 minutes each, and we just rotate."
"For us, here, specifically," said Monroe, "we need at least four lifeguards, and of course, our lovely facility attendants."
Because not all Indy Parks pools opened at the start of the season, Monroe said Thatcher Park Pool has been fairly full, even reaching capacity on some days.
As each additional pool opens, however, Monroe said that helps lift some of the pressure off the current lifeguards.
Indy Parks officials even upped the pay this year to retain a staff of trained lifeguards. They raised the hourly wage by $2 from 2021.
"It pays pretty well this year, especially after the raise," said Wong.
"I think our pay is actually very comparable to a lot of our competition," said Monroe. "Our standard pay now is $15 an hour starting."
Even though staffing levels and procedures are not back to pre-pandemic levels, Monroe said things are getting better.
"We are opening more pools than we did before," said Monroe. "Like I said, coming out of COVID procedure is kind of hard to get as much staff as you need."
Some of the indoor pools, like Thatcher Park Pool, need lifeguards year-round.
Officials with Indy Parks said they are looking into additional lifeguard training this fall, so when next summer rolls around, they will have a larger team trained and ready to hit the pools.