NBC Sports Philadelphia to air Jersey Shore lifeguard championship races

Colin Stewart, 24, a former Strathmere lifeguard who now has his own production company, Five Tribes Cinema, has been livestreaming the South Jersey Lifeguard races this summer on his YouTube channel, using drones and powerful lenses to capture what can seem like a mysterious competition just watching from the beach.

Two of the summer’s premiere races, the Bill Howarth Women’s Lifeguard Invitational on Aug. 10 in Ventnor and the South Jersey Championships in Longport on Aug. 12, will be produced into a one-hour package to air in the fall on NBC Sports Philadelphia.

“NBC Sports Philadelphia is presenting as a one-hour special, but air dates/times remain TBD,” Brian Potter, a spokesperson for NBC Universal, confirmed Tuesday.

It’s a heady moment for the beloved and fiercely fought lifeguard races, a popular and competitive sport for participants and spectators all summer long, but a thrilling tradition that has rarely gotten the exposure of a television broadcast, complete with interviews, commentary provided by experts, and audio piped in from the races.

His company, Stewart said, will be “filming the parts of the race almost nobody sees.”

He will provide expert commentary by Meghan Holland, a lieutenant on the Ventnor Beach Patrol and veteran competitor, and others.

“We have two or three drones out there, one doing wide angle, one dropping in on different views and crews,” Stewart said. “We get really far down the course. Competitors love it for the coaching aspect. Last year, we got a lot of the flag turns. You can see the angle, see how to take it better.”

On his YouTube channel, Stewart said, “people from all over the world were watching.”

Stewart said he started out in 2020 filming crew races for the Philadelphia Scholastic Rowing Association, when parents weren’t allowed to go to the races because of the pandemic.

“They asked, ‘Could you bring a camera?’ We brought a drone,” he said. “People seemed to like this coverage, so we thought, we have all the gear to do it, why don’t we do a lifeguard race?”

The lifeguard races pose similar issues for spectators on the beach as the crew races do for people lined up on the Schuylkill, he said: .Nobody really knows what’s going on except when the competitors are directly in front of them.

“It’s the same problems as with the Schuylkill,” he said. “You’re standing on a beach, perpendicular to the racecourse. You only see the start, you only see the finish.” The drone shots can also help settle any disputed finishes, such as in this summer’s Atlantic City Lifeguard Classic, when, he said, “only one boat crossed the finish line because they all made mistakes,” and a boat in a far-outside lane thought it had won.

Local boosters of the Lifeguard races are advocating for Coastal Rowing to be added as an Olympic sport as early as the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, and the sport has been getting more exposure. This makes the broadcast a natural for NBC Sports Philadelphia.

“NBC is the Olympic sports channel,” Stewart said. “When you think about it, football and baseball didn’t start out as multibillion-dollar industries. It started out with one guy with a camera.”

For the NBC Sports production, Stewart said he will combine footage from the two events, interviews with participants, and expert commentary. His crew typically sets up under a tent on the beach, and he directs the cameras from the makeshift control room for the livestream.

Stewart is the son of Suzé DiPietro, who oversaw entertainment and public relations for the Trump casinos in Atlantic City for many years, so he is well-versed in the ways of the Jersey Shore. Asked what that was like, he said: “She told horror story after horror story. She liked the rock-and-roll part of it.”