In Mason City we hire 15 year old lifeguards, just have to watch their hours so they don’t reach over 80 hours (2 weeks) for child labor laws. Then like North Liberty we try to have at least an older person behind them and in front of them in the rotation.
Once they get to the top of the slides, then we have a 16+ year old either do a longer rotation there to cover for the 15 year that can’t be up there. When we have been short staffed, we’ve had our cashiers go up and do top of slides as well. They did do training as well just in case of an emergency.