Generations of Peninsula kids owe their Junior Lifeguard experience to Coach Taylor
by Garth Meyer
Ken Taylor started coaching swimmers as an assistant for the women’s swim team at El Camino College in 1973. Half a century later, he’s still coaching.
“I was out of a job for maybe an hour, in 1996, when I got a call from the Palos Verdes Beach Beach Club and that’s where I’ve been since,” Taylor said.
He’s also coached elsewhere. At Leuzinger, Narbonne and Hawthorne high schools. He coached at South End Racquet Club, the Manhattan Country Club and the South Bay Aquatics Swim School.
But he’s best known as the turn-to-coach for preparing local kids to pass the Los Angeles County Junior Lifeguard test.
JG’s is a rite of passage in the South Bay. Parents know if their kids go to JGs, they can go to the beach alone. Kids know if they go to JGs, they can enjoy without fear all the ocean has to offer; swimming, diving, surfing, sailing and fishing for the rest of their lives.
But first, kids have to pass the JG 100-yard swim test. It’s not enough to be able to swim 100 yards. They have to be fast.
For 9-year-olds the cutoff time is 1:50; for 12-year-olds it’s 1:40; for 14-year-olds it’s 1:30. The JG swim tests are held in March and April.
Taylor first began teaching the class in 1980, and at the Beach Club since the late ‘90s, three classes a day, 25 kids per class, through the spring.
Almost all the kids pass who complete his classes.
“Ken really cares about the kids, he’s really good at just being committed,” said Chris Manos, Palos Verdes Beach Club director. “He has a lot of experience and skill. Mix that with the commitment, and that’s what makes him an asset to the community.”
On the last day of JG classes, Taylor used to pace his swimmers up and down the pool deck on a unicycle. The tradition ended a few years ago for safety reasons.
At 74, he still starts each morning at the Beach Club at 5 a.m., removing the pool cover and dropping in the lane lines.
He trains swimmers at every level, from six-month-old babies, to Olympians.
He said swimming comes naturally to kids.
“You dip ‘em, you warm the armpits and if you can stretch ‘em, they will float on their back,” Taylor said. “They swim inside their mama before they are born.”
He works with many kids under age three.
“They call them the Terrible Twos. I call them the Wonder Twos. I wonder what they’re going to do next.”
Taylor has taught special needs students as well.
“It’s not so much the teaching, it’s what I learn,” he said. “They accept you, so why can’t you accept them?”
After graduating from Leuzinger High School, the Hawthorne native served in the Navy for four years as a radarman on destroyers.
In his 30s and 40s, Taylor spent 10 years as a professional wrestler. He started out going against friends in Wisconsin, and ended with matches in Tijuana.
“They pay you 25-50 bucks. The doctor bills were about 125,” he said. “Tables, ladders, chairs, we used all that stuff.”
Manos has been the Palos Verdes Beach Club director the past 16 years.
“Coach Taylor is a very important part of the club,” Manos said. “We have people who send their grandkids to him. We’re honored to have him be part of our team all these years.” PEN
