Lifeguards reflect on secrets to success after fourth rowing title
John Livingstone, in the bow, and Justin Cattan crash through a large breaking wave during the 2025 U.S. Lifesaving Association National Lifeguard Championships in Huntington Beach, California. They won the men’s open doubles row category for the fourth year in a row and plan to go for five next year in Fort Lauderdale. Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times
By Ron Hayes
Four years ago, they won first place in Hermosa Beach, California.
Three years ago, they won first place in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Last year, they won first place on San Padre Island, Texas.
And on Aug. 8, in Huntington Beach, California, Justin Cattan and John Livingstone won the National Lifeguard Championships’ men’s doubles rowing event for the fourth year in a row.
Cattan, 34, guards lives with Delray Beach Ocean Rescue.
Livingstone, 30, resigned from the department in June but competed as an alumni in the Delray Beach chapter of the U.S. Lifesaving Association, which sponsors the annual championships.
They did not row, row, row their boat gently down a stream.
On the contrary.
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This year, 20 teams of two men each had signed up to compete. When they saw how rough the sea was that Friday, seven teams dropped out.
Cattan and Livingstone were not among them.
The whistle blew, and 13 teams ran about 25 yards to their boats, jumped in and started rowing.
Livingstone was in the bow of their 19-foot wood and fiberglass Asay surf boat, Cattan in the stern.
The course was a semi-circle, marked by two parallel buoys offshore, about 245 feet apart, and a third at the apex, about 985 feet offshore. Cattan and Livingstone rowed around that farthest buoy, returned to shore, touched a flag, rowed around the apex and back a second time, touched the flag, then rowed out to pass the far buoy a third time.
The race was not timed, but 16 to 18 minutes later, when judges declared them the first to complete the course, Cattan and Livingstone had rowed about 6,560 feet or 1.25 miles.
“We never considered dropping out,” Cattan said. “Not to say that it wasn’t scary. We had 5- to 7-foot pounding waves.”
They also had determination, months of training and, perhaps most important of all, a friendship that began years before either man ever climbed onto a Delray Beach lifeguard stand.
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Lifeguards aren’t needed in a January blizzard, so up North, it’s a summer job.
John Livingstone was a lifeguard for nine summer seasons in Wildwood, New Jersey. He had the town’s southernmost stand.
For 12 seasons, Justin Cattan was a lifeguard in Wildwood Crest, just below Wildwood. He had the town’s northernmost stand.
“So, my last stand in Wildwood Crest was next to Johnny’s first stand in Wildwood,” Cattan recalled. “We would assist each other on rescues, and we became friends.”
Another lifeguard friend, Mike Gibson, had visited Deerfield Beach and liked the area. In 2019, the trio rented an apartment in Delray Beach, where January blizzards are extremely rare and the lifeguard jobs are full time.
Delray Beach Ocean Rescue hired Cattan and Livingstone a week apart in February 2020.
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The city doesn’t underwrite their expenses or provide time off to attend the USLA championships, so the local chapter raises funds to cover their travel, hotel and entry fees.
From May until race day, they trained on their own time in front of the lifeguard headquarters.
“We’d get there in the summers at 7:45 a.m., train after roll call until 8:40, then get our stuff and open our towers at 9,” Livingstone recalled. “And we can train on our lunch breaks, too. To get the time off, we use vacation time or swap our days with other lifeguards.”
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On June 25, 2023, they volunteered for an unusually rigorous training session.
The Crossing For Cystic Fibrosis is an annual event in which paddleboarders paddle the 80 miles from Bimini in the Bahamas to Lake Worth Beach, raising money for Piper’s Angels Foundation, which assists families living with the disease. The event is primarily for paddleboarders, but Cattan and Livingstone were able to participate in a rowboat division.
Cattan, Livingstone and two other rowers, Doug Davis and J.D. Briggs, rowed for 13 hours, from midnight until 1 p.m.
“It was beautiful at night,” Livingstone recalled. “You could see all the stars, the colors of the universe almost.”
Except for one frightening encounter.
“Our guide was a 65-foot yacht out of Miami, but its radar went out and we almost got run over by a shipping freighter. We didn’t know if the ship was coming toward us or moving away. We saw a couple lights coming at us, and next thing the water’s everywhere. It was like a ghost ship coming at us.”
The Delray Beach chapter raised $10,000 for Angel’s Pipers.
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Every rescue is different, they agree, but some are more different than others. Some are more memorable.
One evening in 2013, Livingstone, 18 at the time, was just about to break down his stand in Wildwood after a long day.
Two little girls, 7 or 8 years old, were standing in waist-deep water, not far from shore, when they were pulled into a strong northerly current carrying them toward an outflow pipe pouring rainwater into the sea.
The danger was not that they would be pulled into the pipe, as the rainwater was rushing out, but under it.
“The two of them were pretty much on top of the pipe, with a strong current under the pipe,” he recalled. “I wedged my legs under the pipe and got one girl wrapped in my red buoy flotation device and the other girl held on and just went over the pipe and floated down easy.
“It made me realize how serious this job can be.”
In 2016, Justin Cattan was already off duty one evening in Wildwood Crest when he spotted a figure running toward his stand, arms frantically waving.
Cattan and two other guards paddled out to two victims caught in a riptide.
“One guy was just in jeans and a T-shirt in waist-deep water when the riptide grabbed him. I had to dive to get him, and we gave him oxygen, and they had to take him to the hospital and pump his stomach.
“He came back the next morning to say thank you,” Cattan said, “and that almost never happens.”
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Four years ago, a single trophy from the National Lifesaving Championships’ men’s doubles rowing event stood in the glass case full of trophies at the Delray Beach Ocean Rescue headquarters on South Ocean Boulevard.
Three years ago, there were two. Two years ago, there were three.
Now there are four trophies on display, all won by Justin Cattan and John Livingstone.
For now, Livingstone is relaxing back home in New Jersey. He may travel, and in the fall he plans to move back in with Mike Gibson, his recent roommate, in Deerfield Beach.
“I can’t see the future,” he says, “but I know I enjoy every minute lifeguarding. Justin and my success has come from a great friendship and hard work and dedication, and I couldn’t be prouder of having him for a teammate and friend.”
Cattan and his partner, Julia Sheffer, have a 9-month-old daughter named Charley. They are teaching her to call Livingstone “Uncle Johnny.”
“I’m taking it one day at a time,” Cattan says. “I’m enjoying my family and friends, so I don’t need to look too far ahead. If I can be the best teammate, partner and parent, that’s enough for me.”
Next year, the NLSA Lifeguard Championships will be held in Fort Lauderdale, to mark the 100th anniversary of that city’s Ocean Rescue.
Cattan and Livingstone plan to be there too, rowing toward a fifth trophy.
In the end, though, the trophies are nice and friendships are precious, but saving lives is always a deadly serious job.
“You’re there on people’s best days,” Livingstone said, “and you’re there on what could be the last day of their life.”
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