From EasyReader:
As the Beach Boys’ “Fun, Fun, Fun” played in the background, a crowd gathered at the Hermosa Beach pier on Saturday to watch the Junior Lifeguards compete in the annual Taplin relay.
The Taplin relay kicks off with the 150-meter dash on the sand, followed by a 250-meter ocean swim and a 400-meter paddleboard leg.
Of the 15 teams that competed in the girls Taplin, the team from Venice Beach – runner Helene Miles, 14, swimmer Kira Makuta, 15, and paddleboarder Coertunay Krause, 17 – finished first.
The trio made a cohesive team. Friends since childhood, they refer to one another as family. “It feels really good,” they said simultaneously when asked how it felt to win. “We trained actually really hard for it this year,” Makuta added.
As this was Krause’s last year in the Junior Lifeguards program, she was thrilled with the victory.
