Huntington Beach lifeguard hospitalized with spinal cord injury
A Huntington Beach city lifeguard remains hospitalized after suffering a serious spinal cord injury on the job on Monday.
The Huntington Beach Fire Outreach Foundation identified the lifeguard as Elizabeth Lovat, a 2020 graduate of Huntington Beach High.
Officials said she has been in serious but stable condition this week at a local hospital following the injury.
Lovat was not actively involved in a rescue when the injury occurred, Huntington Beach public affairs manager Jennifer Carey said Thursday night. No other information has been released about the injury out of respect for the family’s privacy.
The HBFOF has set up a PayPal donation link to raise money for Lovat and her family.
Former Huntington Beach High girls’ water polo coach Jacob Moore, who started coaching Lovat in club water polo at age 13, knows her to be a fighter. He said she has already dealt with a lot of adversity in her life over the past several years.
Her father passed away from cancer during her senior year of high school, Moore said, and her mother was also fighting breast cancer during that time as well.
As for Lovat herself, Moore said she had a shoulder surgery to repair injured tendons after high school. But she returned stronger than ever and has played three years of Division I collegiate water polo at Iona College in New York.
“It’s going to be a long road to recovery, but what I know from coaching Lizzie is that she is a major fighter,” Moore said in a text message, adding that she was one of his favorite players to coach. “No matter what the obstacle is, she is always optimistic and will do anything it takes to get better.”
Lovat is a speech pathology major at Iona.
“Elizabeth has a passion for helping others and has learned and used her communication skills with American Sign Language to help her community, which has in turn shaped her career and educational goals,” a post on the Huntington Beach Fire Outreach Foundation website says. “She knows what it takes to overcome life’s most challenging setbacks and persevere. Her dad taught her not to be afraid of failure, and her attitude has inspired those around her.”
Lovat is going into her senior year at Iona. The utility player competed in 23 games this spring as a junior women’s water polo player for the Gaels, scoring 10 goals and dishing out one assist.
Lovat is also a two-time Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference All-Academic team selection. According to the foundation website, she was on the dean’s list last year with a 4.0 grade-point average.
She was awarded as a Ben Carlson Foundation scholarship recipient in 2021. Carlson was a Newport Beach lifeguard who died during an ocean rescue in 2014. He was honored with a ceremony at the site of the rescue on Thursday, which was the anniversary of his death.
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