“Twenty eyes are better than two” is a refrain that swim team members at John Adams HS in Queens hear from their coach, physical education teacher Alex Navarrete, encouraging them to watch out for one another’s safety. They found out how true it is one afternoon in December 2023 when their attentiveness helped Navarrete save a teammate’s life.

“One of my students said, ‘Coach, he’s underwater,’ and I was able to jump in and get him right away,” explained Navarrete. “Every second counts when you’re underwater. Five seconds more could have been a different scenario.”

The 11th-grade student at the high school in Jamaica had been swimming for only two weeks. Navarrete often recruits student athletes who are absolute beginners because “it’s not a gym credit, it’s a survival skill,” he said. The student quickly got the hang of swimming across the pool but hadn’t yet mastered treading water and floating. Navarrete instructed him to sink to the bottom of the pool and push himself up, a common technique for novice swimmers who need a break. But the student lost track of the depth of the pool, couldn’t find the bottom and couldn’t push himself back to the surface. He lost consciousness.

Navarrete jumped in and carried him to the water’s edge.

“He was able to expel water right away, and it was a great sign that he had a pulse,” said Navarrete. Most of his students quickly cleared the room. Those who stayed retrieved the bag valve mask, which Navarrete used to help the student breathe, and the defibrillator, a device that can restore a stopped heartbeat, which he was relieved not to need.

“It takes a whole team to save someone’s life,” said Navarrete.

By the time the ambulance arrived, the student was “sitting up and joking,” said Navarrete. “He saved himself — he fought for his life.”

Navarrete, himself an alumnus of John Adams HS, was born in Uruguay. “Every summer when I was little, I was always in the water,” he said. When he immigrated to Queens at age 15, he had a challenging time as an English language learner. Athletics were a lifeline, he said.

As soon as he got his license as a physical education teacher, he said he “wanted to go back” to his old school and “give back,” especially to the English language learners, to whom he feels a special connection. He’s been teaching there for 22 years.

“He’s a really good person,” said Bonnie Lestz, the UFT chapter leader at the school, who is as impressed by Navarrete’s “passion and dedication” as she was by his life-saving efforts.

Navarrete was concerned the ordeal would traumatize his students. In fact, they came back wanting to swim even more — including the student whose life he saved.

“He wants to beat this, learn how to swim and be an example for the ones who are coming in the future,” Navarrete said.