HIS RUNNING ROUTES - RYAN GOUSSE (FIFA MASTER 25th EDITION)
Ryan Gousse was born in Queens, New York, the youngest of three in a Haitian household. His parents had come to the U.S. with the future in mind, guided by a mix of traditions from home and lessons learned in their early years in America. When Ryan was just a toddler, his father got a new job and the family relocated to suburban Orlando.
At home, though, structure remained firm. Sunday mornings meant pressed clothes, ironed collars, and matching belts and shoes. “If we looked like anything indecent,” Ryan said, “that could be a huge crime.” That pressure wasn’t always easy to understand as a child, but it instilled in him something important: that how you move through the world matters.
Though he spent most of his life in Florida, a big piece of Ryan’s identity was formed elsewhere in the mountains of Haiti. Each year, Ryan returned to a rural mountain town called Paillant. There, his time was filled with long days of football and visits to distant relatives his dad hadn’t seen in decades. “I feel like I grew up with a lot of the kids there,” he says.
But the trips weren’t just for leisure. Ryan was also witness to his father’s efforts to give back, organizing medical equipment deliveries, staffing clinics, building houses, and even training locals to run their own bee farms. Watching that kind of hands-on community work introduced Ryan to a form of service that was both practical and personal – something, while unbeknownst to him, that would resurface later in life.
Back in Florida, sports became both an outlet and a framework. Whether it was karate, golf, (American) football, or baseball, physical activity helped him find his place in new schools and shifting social circles. And then one summer, a change of pace altered everything. “I beat one of the kids on the cross-country team who was pretty good,” he says of the PE mile he ran as part of a summer elective. A few weeks before the season started, Ryan found himself on the cross-country course…soaked…and questioning his decisions. “My first run was after a hurricane. It was in the state park and there was water up to my hip. We were wading through – and this is Florida where there’s pythons and alligators and everything,” he recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘What did I get myself into? This is a terrible idea.’ And then ended up running for eight years.”
As the miles amassed, so did the sense of belonging. Through high school and college, Ryan didn’t just run, he built something. A team, a system of trust, and a way to hold each other accountable. “We just willed it into existence,” he says of his high school team-turned-family. “We really put in the work to be a good team. We had sharing-feelings sessions where we would tell each other how to be better runners. I maintained an excel sheet with our team stats.”
When Ryan arrived at college, he knew he wanted to keep running, but his environment was constantly evolving. The team was still close, but the intensity of high school camaraderie gave way to a broader mix of commitment levels. It was during his freshman year that he stumbled into the event that would become his specialty: the steeplechase. “They’d throw all the freshmen into it,” he said, mostly because it was under-contested and a good opportunity to score points. But Ryan found he liked the chaos. The barriers broke up the monotony of long-distance racing and gave him something to focus on in the middle of the mental grind. “I could just think about the next barrier, not how many laps were left.”
After graduation, Ryan found himself chasing something else. Determined to qualify for the Olympics, he moved to Portland, Oregon and trained with a professional group. “From probably 2010 or 2011, Tokyo 2020 was what I wanted to do. I still have a notecard where that was the goal.” But the solitude proved tougher than the workouts. The training was serious, but the support system wasn’t there. “There was such a team aspect coming from when I started running in high school. Even though we weren’t as good in college, we were still really close. That disparity just kind of took some of the joy out of it for me,” he said.
Back home, Ryan regrouped. Football re-entered his life, not as a childhood memory, but as a professional path. “I had a lot of downtime in Portland, so I was literally just playing my room with a soccer ball. I had a stool set up where I would shoot onto it,” he remembers. “I was also waking up really early to watch the 2018 World Cup there and I kind of just fell back into it pretty hard.” That falling sensation dropped him into a sales role at MLS’ Orlando City Soccer Club.
What began as a job in sales morphed into the kind of hands-on, community-driven work he’d grown up watching, where impact was both practical and personal. Ryan moved from cold-calling to community-building, helping grow youth programmes while learning how to lead from the inside. “I was coordinating everything: insurance, gear, partnerships, coaching. It was like summer camp all the time.” As the years went on, he took on more ownership of strategy and implementation of the club’s community programmes. But eventually, Ryan began to feel the limits of what he could do within the walls of one club. He knew he needed new tools and a global network to take the next step.
In 2024, Ryan joined the 25th edition of the FIFA Master. “I've always had that international mindset and wanted to live abroad in college. But I never got a chance to study abroad because I competed in every sports season.” The FIFA Master became more than a chance to study abroad. It was an opportunity to plug into a global network of peers, mentors, and perspectives. And it was more than a credential. “It’s like a badge of approval.”
Now, as a FIFA Master graduate, Ryan stands at the intersection of everything that’s shaped him: discipline from home, connection to sport, and the lifelong influence of work that’s both practical and personal. Whether wading through alligator-infested waters in Florida, passing a ball to lifelong teammates in Haiti, or on a pitch in Orlando surrounded by kids who remind him of his younger self, he’s always found meaning in the small, steady moments. So, wherever he goes next, it’ll be those moments that guide him, the ones that remind him that meaning can often thrive in the quietest places.
By Geneva Decker
FIFA Master 25th edition student
FIFA Master - International Master in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport, ranked Europe's No.1 course a record 12 times by SportBusiness.
FIFA Master - 25 years of Excellence in Sport Business Education - organised by CIES in partnership with De Montfort University (UK), SDA Bocconi School of Management (Italy) and the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland).
