MISSION & IMPACT
Why Youth Fitness in San Diego Is a Privilege — And What MFF Is Doing About It
Bryan Schuler | Movement Futures Foundation
In San Diego, a child’s access to quality fitness development doesn’t depend on how hard they’re willing to work. It doesn’t depend on their athletic potential, their coachability, or how badly they want it. It depends on their zip code. It depends on their family’s income. It depends on whether their parents can absorb $1,000 or more per year in youth sports fees — and that’s before a single piece of equipment, before travel, before private coaching.
I’ve been watching this play out in San Diego since 1999. I founded Wired Fitness SD in 2001, and for 25 years I’ve coached youth athletes, adults, and competitive athletes across every fitness format this city has to offer. What I’ve observed over that quarter century is a fitness landscape that has grown increasingly sophisticated, increasingly premium — and increasingly inaccessible to the families who need it most.
Physical development — real, coached, structured physical development — has become a privilege. And that needs to change.
The Numbers Behind the Inequality
The income-based participation gap in youth fitness and sports is not a perception or an anecdote. It is one of the most thoroughly documented disparities in American public health data.
The participation gap between low-income and high-income households in youth sports widened from 13.6 percentage points in 2012 to 20.2 points in 2024. That means the divide isn’t closing — it’s accelerating. The lowest-income bracket was the only income group where participation actually declined in 2023, even as every other income level saw gains. The post-pandemic recovery in youth sports bypassed the families with the fewest resources entirely.
The cost data explains why. Average family spending on youth sports jumped 46 percent since 2019, reaching over $1,000 annually per child — twice the rate of overall U.S. inflation during the same period. Families earning over $150,000 spend an average of $4,097 per year on a child’s primary sport. Families earning under $50,000 spend an average of $951. That’s not a gap in spending preferences. That’s a gap in what’s possible.
Children from the lowest-income households participate in organized sports and fitness programs at roughly half the rate of children from the highest-income households. Low-income children are one-third as likely to play organized sports as children from households earning $75,000 or more. And when it comes to structured, progressive fitness development — not just recreational play, but the kind of coached strength training that builds athletic foundation — the access gap is even wider.
These aren’t numbers about fairness in the abstract. These are numbers about which kids arrive to high school sports with a physical foundation and which ones don’t. Which kids have the movement literacy to compete at the next level and which ones don’t. Which kids build the confidence and discipline that structured athletic development produces — and which ones never get the chance.
✅ The income-based youth sports participation gap widened to 20.2 percentage points in 2024 — the largest on record
✅ Family spending on youth sports is up 46% since 2019, now averaging over $1,000 per child annually
✅ Low-income children are one-third as likely to participate in organized sports as their higher-income peers
The income-based youth sports participation gap widened from 13.6 percentage points in 2012 to 20.2 points in 2024, with the lowest-income bracket being the only group where participation declined in 2023. Average family spending on youth sports rose 46% since 2019. → Youth Sports Hits Record Participation, But 46% Cost Surge and Widening Income Gap Threaten Growth — Youth Sports Business Report, 2025
What San Diego’s Fitness Landscape Actually Looks Like
San Diego has world-class fitness infrastructure. Premium gyms, elite youth sports clubs, private coaching facilities, and travel sports programs that attract talent from across the region. For families who can afford it, the options are exceptional.
For families who can’t, the options are dramatically different.
San Diego County has over 20,000 youth experiencing homelessness, with youth making up approximately 20 percent of the county’s unsheltered homeless population. An estimated one in 30 youth ages 13 to 17 will experience some form of homelessness this year. These are the young people furthest from access to structured fitness programming — and they exist in the same city as some of the most expensive private youth sports programs in the country.
But the access gap isn’t limited to youth experiencing housing instability. It runs through the full economic middle of this city. Families earning $50,000 to $75,000 — solidly working class, not impoverished — face youth sports costs that consume a meaningful percentage of their annual income if they want to access the same quality of programming that higher-income families treat as routine. The pay-to-play model that has come to define American youth athletics has made structured physical development a luxury good.
And structured strength training — the kind that builds foundational athletic capability, injury resilience, and movement literacy — sits at the premium end of an already premium market. Private personal training for youth athletes runs $80 to $150 per session or more in San Diego. Specialty youth performance programs charge monthly fees that rival private school tuition. The families who can access this level of coaching are the same families whose kids are already showing up to youth sports with advantages.
The result is a two-tier system. Kids from higher-income families arrive to competitive youth sports with physical foundations already built — strength training, movement coaching, individualized programming. Kids from lower-income families arrive without any of it, and they compete against that baseline from day one.
More than 20,000 youth experience homelessness in San Diego County, with youth making up approximately 20 percent of the county’s unsheltered homeless population, and an estimated one in 30 youth ages 13–17 expected to experience homelessness this year. → Sports 4 Kids — San Diego Youth Homelessness Data, 2024
Why This Isn’t Just About Sports
The conversation about youth fitness access often gets framed as a sports equity issue — who gets to play on which team, who can afford which club. That framing understates the stakes considerably.
Structured physical development in adolescence isn’t just about athletic performance. It’s about metabolic health, mental health, bone density, injury prevention, and the development of physical self-efficacy — a young person’s belief in their own physical capability. Kids who develop foundational strength and movement literacy during their formative years carry those physical and psychological advantages into adulthood. Kids who don’t carry deficits that compound.
The WHO’s European health data shows that children from less affluent families are disproportionately affected by the physical activity gap, and that these disparities contribute to a cycle of disadvantage that affects educational attainment, employment prospects, and overall quality of life. Socioeconomic disparities in adolescent health behaviors don’t stay in adolescence — they follow young people forward.
When we talk about youth fitness access, we’re talking about which kids get to build that foundation and which kids don’t. We’re talking about which communities produce physically capable, confident young people — and which communities are left managing the downstream consequences of bodies that were never properly developed.
In San Diego, a city with extraordinary wealth and extraordinary disparity living side by side, those consequences are not evenly distributed.
The Mentorship Gap That Data Doesn’t Capture
There’s a dimension to the youth fitness access problem that the participation statistics don’t fully capture, and it’s the one I’ve watched play out most closely over 25 years of coaching in this city.
It’s not just access to a program. It’s access to a coach who sees you.
The kids who come from families with resources don’t just get better equipment and nicer facilities. They get coaches who know their names, track their progress, understand their individual patterns of movement and weakness, and hold them accountable over time. They get the experience of having an adult in their athletic life who treats their physical development as something worth investing in seriously.
The kids who come from families without those resources get PE classes with 35 students and a teacher who can’t learn every name. They get recreational programs that cycle through activities without any progressive structure. They get youth sports teams where coaches are focused on winning, not on individual physical development.
The mentorship component of quality coaching is not a luxury add-on. For adolescent athletes, it’s often the most developmentally significant part of the experience. Research consistently shows that young people with meaningful adult mentors in structured activity settings demonstrate better physical outcomes, better academic outcomes, and better long-term health behaviors. That mentorship is currently distributed by income.
What MFF Is Doing About It
Movement Futures Foundation was built around a single conviction: physical development shouldn’t be distributed by income.
MFF is a San Diego nonprofit providing structured youth strength training and coaching to young people ages 10 through 17, regardless of their family’s financial situation. The program is built on 25 years of proven methodology — the same system I’ve applied to youth athletes and adult competitors throughout my career — delivered by coaches I train personally to carry that methodology forward with the same standard.
The scholarship model is the structural answer to the access problem. MFF scholarships are funded through community donations and awarded based on need and program fit — not athletic ability, not competitive standing, not which sport a kid plays. The kids who qualify are the ones who need foundational coaching most, including those who have never had access to it.
The program delivers what the data says is missing:
Progressive, structured strength training — not recreational movement, not sport-specific skill work, but systematically designed physical development that builds real strength over time.
Qualified, consistent coaching — coaches who know each athlete’s name, track their progress, and hold them accountable session to session.
Movement literacy — teaching the foundational movement patterns that protect young bodies in sport and in life.
Mentorship — the kind that higher-income families pay for and lower-income families rarely access.
This is not a recreational program with a scholarship fund bolted on. The scholarship model is the program. Access is the mission. Everything MFF does is built around the goal of making what the data says is a privilege into something that every kid in San Diego can reach.
How You Can Be Part of the Answer
The income-based youth fitness gap is a structural problem. It will not be solved by individual families making better choices or by kids wanting it badly enough. It will be solved by communities deciding that physical development is a right, not a reward for having the right zip code — and then funding the infrastructure to back that decision.
MFF is that infrastructure in San Diego. But we can only serve the kids who need us most if the community that cares about equity in youth development invests in the scholarship model that makes access possible.
Funding a youth scholarship doesn’t just put a kid in a program. It puts a kid in front of a coach who will see their potential, develop their foundation, and hold them accountable to becoming more physically capable than they were before. It closes a gap that data says has been widening for over a decade.
Youth fitness in San Diego is currently a privilege. It doesn’t have to be.
Bryan Schuler is the founder of Movement Futures Foundation and Wired Fitness SD. He holds a master’s degree in exercise science and sports performance and has been training athletes in San Diego since 1999.
Movement Futures Foundation
Put a Coach in Front of a Kid Who Needs One
MFF scholarship funding goes directly to giving San Diego youth access to structured, coached strength training regardless of their family's financial situation. Every dollar closes the gap the data says keeps widening.
Frequently Asked Questions
MFF scholarships are awarded based on financial need and program fit — not athletic ability, competitive standing, or which sport a young person plays. The program is designed for youth ages 10 through 17 who need foundational strength coaching and whose families cannot absorb the cost of private training. If you are a parent interested in scholarship consideration for your child, reach out through the MFF contact page and we will walk you through the process.
Scholarship funding goes directly to covering program costs for a youth athlete who otherwise could not access MFF. When you fund a scholarship, you are covering the coaching, programming, and development costs for a specific young person in San Diego — putting a qualified coach in front of a kid who needs one. MFF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. You can donate through the MFF website or contact us directly to discuss larger or recurring scholarship commitments.
No. MFF is a physical development program, not a sport-specific performance program. While many MFF participants are youth athletes who compete in organized sports, the program is equally valuable for young people who are not currently competing. The foundational strength training, movement literacy, and coaching MFF provides builds physical capability that benefits every young person — regardless of whether they play a sport, want to play a sport, or simply want to develop their body in a safe, coached environment.
Community recreation programs provide activity — they keep kids moving and engaged, and that has real value. MFF provides structured physical development. The difference is progressive programming, individual assessment, qualified coaching, and a mentorship framework that holds young athletes accountable over time. MFF is not a drop-in activity program. It is a systematically designed coaching system built around what 25 years of professional methodology says actually produces physical development in adolescent athletes.
Yes — and corporate and organizational partnerships are one of the most impactful ways to fund access at scale. MFF welcomes sponsorship conversations with San Diego businesses, foundations, and community organizations that want to invest in youth physical development in a direct, measurable way. Sponsorships can be structured as one-time donations, recurring annual commitments, or named scholarship funds. Contact MFF directly to discuss partnership opportunities and how your organization can be part of closing the access gap in San Diego youth fitness.
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