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Amway Hero Awards 2024: John Mueller

Be a team player

Ask any 10- to 14-year-old student athlete in Los Angeles County who their biggest sports hero is, and you might hear the name of one of today’s most elite athletes. But chances are, that student owes their own chance to play to a man they’ve never heard of: John Mueller, Amway IBO and founder and executive director of the Foundation for Interscholastic Youth Athletics.

On any given day, John might be soliciting a grant application, out on a field painting soccer lines or resolving a scheduling conflict, all so that young people in LA can have the opportunity to play in team sports, on their school team, regardless of their background, religion, race or socioeconomic status.

An LA native, John remembered that even when he was growing up, not every school had a sports program. “I grew up in a public school, K-6,” he recalled, “and then in seventh grade, I went to the Catholic school, and they had sports. And I was like, ‘Wow. This is cool.’”

John met his wife, Nina, in that Catholic school. He later went on to earn a law degree and practice corporate law in Los Angeles. When he and his wife started sending their children (now ages 22 to 28) to school, they chose St. Jerome, and John was asked to become the athletic director. In that job, John realized that youth sports was his passion. And he realized something else: thousands of young students, all across the county, never got a chance to play.

“In California, we have a significant number of charter schools,” John said. “And a lot of those schools were reaching out to us and asking to participate in the after-school sports program run by the Catholic Youth Organization. And the way that organization was structured, it just didn’t work.”

A lot of people might have let the matter rest there. But John felt called to answer what he saw as an urgent need. “Healthy competition builds connections and strengthens lifelong social skills,” John said. “Sportsmanship, working together as a team, setting goals, showing respect, losing and winning gracefully – I think these are all crucial.”

In 2011, he put some of the skills he’d honed in his own time playing sports, in his legal career and as an Amway IBO to work and launched a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit: Foundation for Interscholastic Youth Athletics, or FIYA.

“Youth sports through FIYA is an extension of the educational process,” John said. “Just like a kid might go and learn math and science, they’re going to go and play volleyball, soccer or flag football for their school team.”

In contrast to the way that sports are conducted in LA at the high school level, FIYA is a one-stop shop. “We do it all,” John said. “We put schools in a league that’s geographically convenient. We schedule every single game. We set up all the rules. We get the facilities, we get the referees, the game operators.” The result is a system that schools want to plug into. “We’ve gotten to the point where we really no longer market ourselves,” John admitted. “Schools have heard about us, and we’re even seeing a post-COVID surge.”

So far, FIYA, has served over 55,000 student athletes, 5,000 school teams and 200 schools. Sports offered include flag football, volleyball, cross-country, basketball, e-sports, cheer/dance, futsal, soccer, and track and field.

When asked about the future, John is clear on his desire for the program to outlive him. “Right now, FIYA is still in the stage where it relies on me, but it’s important to me that it continues,” he said. “So we’re trying to put things into place so that when new people come in, it’ll continue to grow.”

When he sees what FIYA is doing for today’s students, John is motivated to continue his work, even though it can’t compare to his other pursuits financially. “One story that still resonates with me is about a girls volleyball team in South LA, years ago,” he said. These girls played volleyball for the first time during middle school, and they all continued to play in high school. The athletic director of the middle school told me that all the girls went to college – and that they were all the first in their family to go to college. He said FIYA provided the opportunity for the girls to participate in a positive after-school activity and to learn that through discipline and consistent work, the girls could achieve their goals.”