The Dying YMCA Culture: Where’s The Next Song?

Image via YMCA

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While every Young Men’s Christian Association, or more widely known as the YMCA, is different, each one is built on the same foundational idea: to provide communities with a space that supports physical well-being while fostering connection. No matter where a YMCA is located, members scan in with a physical key card (which in and of itself is a dying concept), then choose their own version of wellness—lifting weights, climbing the stair stepper, shooting hoops, or, most notably in my experience, swimming laps. In my opinion, the pool tells its own story. Fluorescent lights glare against a wall of windows that only imitate sunlight. The air sits at ninety-seven degrees in the dead of winter. Old swim blocks remain bolted to the deck despite being long out of commission. Plastic lawn chairs line the wall, untouched. There are enough pool weights to supply an army. People cycle in and out constantly—triathletes renting lanes, retirees floating through slow laps, and YMCA-affiliated swim team members, a group that once defined my childhood.

But the AquaFit class is the truest representation of YMCA culture. A group of mostly women, ranging from their early sixties to late eighties, shuffle out of the locker room for their daily forty-five minutes of movement. I often wonder whether they care more about the fifty “cross-country” exercises or the gossip exchanged between sets—fires at local diners, their daughters’ marriages, or questions directed at me, the nineteen-year-old lifeguard, about my love life and whether I have a boyfriend. From my perch above the pool, three hours into a lifeguarding shift and dripping with sweat, I watched my patrons—not with the fear that one of them might drown, but with the awareness that I might be watching something disappear. I knew them well enough to play my 70s and 80s yacht rock playlist—with songs like Maggie May by Rod Stewart on repeat—and I began to realize that they may represent the last generation of true YMCA community members.

Founded in London in the 1840s as a refuge for young Christian men seeking fellowship and faith during a rapidly industrializing era, the YMCA reached the United States about a decade later in a South Boston church basement. By 1909, swim lessons were introduced, and the YMCA slowly evolved into the gym-centered community space we recognize today. Women were not allowed to join until after World War II—nearly a century after its founding—yet over time, the YMCA became one of the most inclusive and accessible fitness spaces in America. The YMCA experienced a cultural resurgence in the mid-1980s when the Village People’s Y.M.C.A. climbed the charts. While the song’s connotations may have shifted over time, its lyrics remain oddly accurate. You can still play basketball, take a shower, see familiar faces, and rely on friendly service and routine—values increasingly absent from modern society. 

Another truth about the YMCA reveals itself in winter. When snowstorms roll in and the rest of the world seems to shut down, schools are cancelled, no eggs in the grocery store, boutique gyms post apologies on Instagram—the Y stays open. The parking lot may be half empty and the roads barely plowed, but the lights are on and someone is always behind the front desk. A few parents bring restless kids who have nowhere else to go. People linger a bit longer than usual and not necessarily to work out, but to exist somewhere warm, familiar, and predictable. The Y becomes less about fitness and more about refuge for some people in times of uncertainty. As an employee, it isn’t necessarily high on my to do list to be driving home from a shift at the YMCA when there wasn’t a single patron in the pool for four hours due to a snow storm, but I still had to be there, but there is a greater importance to the Y being open despite the weather: YMCA’s have another key selling point of showing up for their communities both small and wide in times of uncertainty, ease, and hardship. 

As a nineteen-year-old college student who has spent her life immersed in sports, my relationship with fitness has evolved. Like many people my age, I have gravitated toward weightlifting. It is accessible, efficient, and relatively easy to learn—if you have access to a gym. Last summer, determined to follow a lifting program and focus on my overall well-being, I explored options: Planet Fitness with its free student memberships, overcrowded local gyms lacking proper equipment, and eventually a private CrossFit gym where I trained with my former swim coach. It worked for me, but it wouldn’t work for everyone.

What stands out most is that throughout this entire search, I never once considered my local YMCA.

That oversight reveals the YMCA’s fatal flaw in 2026: Gen Z. In hindsight, the YMCA was the most affordable, accessible, and well-equipped option for my training needs. Yet for my generation, the YMCA has become an afterthought—something associated with childhood swim lessons or aging parents, not young adults building their lives. This places the YMCA in a precarious position. As longtime members age out due to mobility, transportation, or health limitations, the YMCA risks losing not just patrons, but its identity as a community hub.

So the question remains: what is the YMCA’s next hit song?

Whether it arrives through reimagined marketing, targeted outreach, or having YMCAs being featured in the next season of Heated Rivalry, reinvention is no longer optional. Without it, the affordable, comforting community spaces that have survived wars, cultural shifts, and economic crises may one day stop printing key cards and quietly lock their doors for good.

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This article was edited by Brigid Byrnes.