Discovering basketball at 12 years old transformed Ryan’s world from “wheelchair bound” to bound for college, for professional basketball, and for traveling overseas. Before Ryan went pro, he attended college at Southwest Minnesota State University and led SMSU to the NWBA National Title Game in 2001. Ryan his senior year joined the prestigious 1,000 point club and established all the assist records for the wheelchair basketball program. He graduated in 2002 with a degree in Secondary Education with a minor in Sociology.
Today, Ryan is the Executive Director of the international NPO, The Ryan Martin Foundation (RMF) founded in 2006. RMF’s mission is to help youth and adult athletes with disabilities live independent, impassioned, productive and full lives through sports training, mentoring and education. In that capacity Ryan oversees annual programming which consists of several camps, clinics, and workshops in an effort to provide youth with disabilities more opportunities. Moreover, RMF supports two year round junior program one domestically (In Connecticut) and the other internationally in Madrid, Spain.
Ryan is also the advisor for the City University of NY Athletic Conference (CUNY) working to bring an adaptive sports program to their New York City campuses. In that capacity Ryan has achieved bringing the first adaptive sports team in the history of CUNY and inspiring disabled athletes to return back to college. The Men’s and Women’s Wheelchair Basketball team will launch in the Fall semester of 2020. This program is the first program in the region and will compete nationally within the National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA) Collegiate Conference.
Ryan also currently plays in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA). He is a member of the back to back reigning national champions, the New York Rolling Knicks. Previously, Ryan played professional basketball in Spain & France for ten seasons. In recognition of his life-long dedication to promoting the development of wheelchair basketball on all levels, he was most recently named as the Vice-President of the NWBA. Ryan is also a consultant for the NCAA on their Inclusive Sports Model. Ryan has been recognized for his exceptional work in philanthropy. In 2019 he was named to the Hartford Business Journals “40 under 40” class and received the same honor in 2015 from Connecticut Magazine.