Ryan Sypkens
Founder and CEO, Touch Shooting
This story is part of our July 2026 Young Professionals issue. To read the print version, click here.
Ryan Sypkens, 35, gazes out from the mezzanine as workers finish up a $1 million, 23,000-square-foot renovation project at his Rancho Cordova training facility and reflects on the wild decade since he founded Touch Shooting Academy.
“It has been quite the road,” says Sypkens, once a prep standout at Elk Grove’s Franklin High School. Sypkens went on to play at UC Davis, where he became a starting guard as a freshman and, later on, the all-time leader in three-point shooting for both the school and the Big West Conference.
Sypkens graduated with degrees in psychology and African American studies from UC Davis in 2014 and later received a master’s degree in business administration from Liberty University. After several stops in professional leagues in South America and Japan, he returned to the Sacramento area to start Touch Shooting in 2017, then located inside Sky High Sports facility in Rancho Cordova. He later moved it to Natomas.
Three years in, the COVID-19 shutdown caused Touch Shooting, which offers instruction and evaluation for male and female athletes of all ages, to lose its facility in Natomas.
“We lost a ton of money, and we had to basically start over,” he says, adding that it turned into a positive after they were able to co-occupy the current space on Folsom Boulevard in Rancho Cordova with OMNI Volleyball when another business left.
When OMNI moved on, Touch Shooting became the building’s sole occupant in February of 2026, calling the current location “one of Sacramento’s most premier training facilities.”
“We’ve grown quite a bit,” he says, pointing to the estimated 10,000 students ages 5 and up who have come through Touch Shooting since he founded it at age 26, with several eventually playing with top college programs or professionally. “We want to create the culture that this is way more than basketball, that this program will teach life skills that translate to anything you do.”
“I’ve traveled a lot of places, so I really appreciate that in America anything is possible. In some places, that’s not true. Just the ability to be an entrepreneur here and be able to grow, I really appreciate that about being an American.”
The decision to start a business came at a crossroads in Sypkens’ career. He still had offers to play professionally overseas, but was beginning his relationship with his now-wife, Sunny, and was looking for more stability. As a certified performance psychologist, Sypkens had a passion for helping students improve their basketball skills, both physically and psychologically, using a strict curriculum to instill confidence to get the most out of a player’s athletic ability. Sypkens says that he’s gradually moved towards also developing coaches.
“As I’ve grown and learned and had experiences, it’s also helped our curriculum evolve,” says Sypkens. “It’s helped our techniques on how to train kids and athletes, as well as how to train coaches.”
Sypkens says his continuing mentor is Bay Area native Phil Handy, one of the top player development coaches in the country, now an assistant with the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. Handy coached and played for several teams in the NBA, including with former Sacramento Kings coach Mike Brown when he was with the Los Angeles Lakers and Cleveland Cavaliers.
“I actually trained with him in this building, back in the day, when this was Basketball Town,” Sypkens says. “Whenever I had the chance, I would try to find a way to work out with him.Sometimes I would go once every two to three months, but I still got an incredible amount of value out of it.”
Sypkens says Sunny, his wife of seven years, is the “brains” behind Touch Shooting’s success.
“She makes it run,” he says. “I’m like the visionary. I come up with what we need to do and how we’re going to do it, and she’s the executor and makes sure that everything’s organized.”
Heading towards America’s 250-year anniversary, Sypkens says the amount of international travel he does with his wife has shown him more than ever that the country is still a nation where one can succeed.
“I’ve traveled a lot of places, so I really appreciate that in America anything is possible,” he says. “In some places, that’s not true. Just the ability to be an entrepreneur here and be able to grow, I really appreciate that about being an American.”
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