ENCINITAS — Walking into the Magdalena Ecke YMCA Skate Park, Encinitas pro skateboarder Bryce Wettstein attracts a crowd.
Everyone wants to say hello and get an autograph from the two-time Olympian. Wettstein alternates between red, yellow and black markers depending on the surface.
“Every time I sign a board or sign something or just have an interaction, it feels like a place to pause,” she told The Coast News. “It’s like a good interruption. I always feel like it’s a very spiritual moment, where there’s more than one thing going on. Like, it’s suddenly just this conversation between two people and there’s so much going on. And I feel like that makes the world stop and just stand still.”
Wettstein gives every person their own message of hope, love and gratitude.
“You are a ray of sunshine,” she wrote on one helmet.
“Keep dreaming so big,” she wrote on the back of a Hawaiian shirt.
“I write so much in a day,” Wettstein said. “I’ll start off with morning journaling and then write messages and make paintings. Whenever I write, it’s like that moment of speaking a language to me. I can kind of transpose it and give it to someone else, which makes it a shared connection. I always feel like that’s what makes it so special.
“I find it fun to be able to write too, because it’s such a different form of communication – because it feels deeper. It feels like a deeper connection. So that’s just one of my favorite things in the world. And getting to write their name, too, so you see it visually, and it becomes something that you can see. I love that.”
The Coast News caught up with Wettstein between the 2026 WST World Cup in Rome and the upcoming X Games League stops in Sacramento and Chiba, Japan, where she will compete against many of the world’s top skateboarders as part of the inaugural team-based series.
In addition to attending the Go Skate Day Family Night at the skatepark, she played concerts at Johnny Radz in Leucadia, The Roxy in Encinitas and the YMCA after School of Rock students finished performing.
For Wettstein, a stop in her beloved hometown of Encinitas offered a chance to recharge, even as a packed schedule left little time to slow down before the next leg of her journey.
Music
Wettstein’s father, Max, said she would play all night if possible.
At one point, Max helped Johnny Radz staff close for the night by taking chairs inside while his daughter continued playing.
Her mother, Donna, said Wettstein taught herself to play the ukulele and guitar and learned to sing on her own.
“I don’t know where it comes from,” Donna said.
Bryce played both shows with friends and musical collaborators Marcelino Aguilar and Jesse London.
She performed a mix of covers, originals and medleys that blended the two. She listed Blondie, Stevie Nicks, John Prine and Bonnie Raitt among her favorite artists.
Wettstein regularly freestyles raps in the middle of songs, often delivering specific messages to friends and loved ones in the audience.
Some of her original songs included “Grateful” and “All You Got to Do Is Shine,” which may as well be a statement of purpose.
Wettstein appears compulsively expressive, as if illuminated from within.
“There’s days where I get up, and I feel like, God, I have so much I want to say and do,” she said. “It’s that expression that – it’s for yourself – but it’s like I want to express so I can understand. That’s what it is. It’s the core value of music. It’s being able to literally express and feel like you can maybe get a little crazy, or be in a place that you’re unfamiliar with. Just so you can really, really understand and feel certain. I feel like music is the thing that makes me feel completely connected and certain that I am who I am in that moment.”
Wettstein blew bubbles and read poetry by Shel Silverstein at the Roxy. She folded origami hearts for attendees to match the hearts on her guitar and in her jewelry.
Wettstein was moved to tears after playing “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac at Johnny Radz, and she apologized to the crowd as she composed herself.
“It’s okay,” Donna said. “That’s why you’re so good at what you do. You feel it.”
At one point, when a train passed by the outdoor show and blared its horn, London and Aguilar composed a spontaneous bluesy accompaniment to the rumbling cacophony.
“You’re kind of making where you are more presentable to how you would like it,” Wettstein said. “I think that’s what I love about everything – there’s so many different versions of ourselves, and there’s so many things I want to express.”
Skating
Wettstein’s playful expressiveness was not limited by the vocabulary choices of George and Charles Merriam or Noah Webster. When describing the hectic Go Skate Day event, she used a word that simultaneously acknowledged and embraced the craziness.
“Days like today, they capture the fun chaos,” she said. “It’s funny, we call it, ‘o-chaos.’”
At the event, Wettstein handed out decorative pencil erasers and skated in a bowl holding flowers for several runs. One of her younger fans presented her with paper flowers she had drawn herself.
Five-year-old Ethan Mikael approached Wettstein to ask whether she wanted to skate with him.
Ethan’s mother, Loren, said he had seen Wettstein around town and at the skatepark before.
“Mom, I know her,” Ethan said.
“Honey, everybody knows her,” Loren responded.
The YMCA is where Wettstein first started skating at age 5.
“She practically grew up at the Y,” Max said.
The YMCA remained a constant in Wettstein’s life as her skating career took off. Years later, the Wettstein family donated their hand-built backyard vert ramp to the Encinitas YMCA, a gesture of appreciation and support for the nonprofit that helped nurture their daughter’s love of skateboarding.
The impact of those early years at the Y extended beyond skating.
“For a while, I felt like I just wanted to be different, and I didn’t realize that everyone’s different,” she said. “I used to just try to make up words or wear the craziest things just to constantly push the norm. And then I realized there’s no norm. You can just show up exactly how you feel and are. And that’s the biggest gift to all of us – just having fun.
“Now I’m 22, so I feel like I’m just so ready to be exactly who I am.”
Wettstein said she sees creative similarities between music and skating in being present through a constant, unfolding state of becoming. She called the flow state “a privilege.”
“The coolest part of it — the music and the flow state or the skate runs — is you’re on this tangent, and then you pull yourself back, and you’re, like, ‘That was incredible,’” Wettstein said. “It’s really nice to be able to reflect on that. That’s probably the most beautiful part of the whole thing — the reflection. Because it gives you a sense of hope that it will always happen again, but in a new way.
“As soon as you decide, ‘I’m going to be present,’ everything else falls into place and everything lines up – like telephone lines. Everything lines up and somehow adjusts in ways beyond your control, but it feels like you’ve controlled it, somehow. I think it’s super nice that skateboarding does that for us, because you can just focus on one moment, and then the rest happens. Like a happenstance kind of thing.”
