Photo Courtesy: CFISDEducation
Cypress Falls alumnus captures the world’s biggest sporting moments
Ryan Schmidt will never forget his night in Mexico City this past June. Mexico had just beaten Ecuador at the 2026 FIFA World Cup for its first knockout stage victory at the tournament in 40 years.
“We get to maybe a mile and a half from our hotel, and security stops the van and says, ‘Look, we’re not going to be able to get much further. It’s going to be better for y’all to walk,’” Schmidt said. “Our five people, plus a couple more security guards, start walking through this sea of humanity. There were people riding on buses with giant flags and guys in giant sombreros with noisemakers. It was just an insane thing.”
That was just one of many unforgettable nights the 2007 Cypress Falls High School graduate has had in 2026. As a freelance film and television cinematographer, he’s had the opportunity to work both the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy for NBC and now the FIFA World Cup in North America for Fox.
At the Olympics, Schmidt helped shoot both lifestyle pieces about different Italian towns and interviews with various athletes and teams. At the World Cup, he helped set up pregame live television shots before shooting matches on his own camera, capturing footage Fox later used in feature stories and promotional content.
“Being in the stadium with all the different fan bases [at the World Cup], the energy was electric,” Schmidt said. “It was such a rush going almost daily. You’re either traveling or covering a game. You don’t get to sit down long enough to realize how crazy it has been. You just kind of keep going, you keep moving, and you just ride that wave.”
It’s a career he’s excelled in, using skills he can trace back to his days at Cypress Falls. Schmidt credits the campus’s diversity for teaching him how to interact with and make friends with people from all backgrounds. He also had to balance the demands of band, National Honor Society and Key Club at Cypress Falls, as well as hockey outside of school.
“I was super involved at Cy Falls in a lot of organizations, and I think that experience managing all of that really helped along the way,” Schmidt said. “Working freelance, you’re constantly reaching out to people and managing all these little things, and I think the organizations and everything at Cy Falls really taught me how to network, which is basically what I live now.”
Schmidt was never really involved in film at Cypress Falls nor at St. Edwards University, where he graduated with a Bachelor’s in Digital Media Management. However, he had always had an interest in film and TV, tracing back to the days he would go to the movies with his mom.
After some time in event production, everything finally clicked into place in 2013. Schmidt received the opportunity to produce the show Friday Night Tykes on the Esquire Network. He was in charge of both shooting footage and backing it up and sending it back to the editors.
“Once I got going and was consistently on that show, that’s when I started learning I really enjoy this,” Schmidt said. “I like the people in this industry. I like the sports aspect of it. I think I can stick with this for sure.”
In 2017, Schmidt began freelancing full-time. It’s a journey that has seen him serve as a camera operator for Fixer Upper on the Magnolia Network and My 600lb Life on TLC, the Director of Photography for multiple Discovery shows, a sports cinematographer for ESPN, NBC Golf, NHL Studios, NFL Network, Fox Sports and much more.
“When you first go freelance, all you’re hoping for is some work. You want to get enough to survive, so I was taking everything that was coming my way,” Schmidt said. “As my career has progressed, I can be a little pickier with things. I’ve kind of found sports and true crime are my go-tos that I like doing.”
There have been many highlights from shooting his first College Football National Championship in 2019 to covering Final Fours, a Super Bowl and the Iron Man World Championships. Now, he can add a World Cup and Olympics to that prestigious list.
Back in Cypress, it’s a journey that John Morrison, Ryan’s band director at Cypress Falls and CFISD’s current director of fine arts, has followed from afar.
“When I learned through social media that Ryan was crisscrossing North America as a cameraman for FIFA television broadcasts, my attention was not only on the excitement of the soccer match I was watching, but the chance that I might recognize a cameraman on the sideline in one of the field view shots,” Morrison said. “There’s nothing but pride when a teacher sees our former students are out there doing such amazing and productive things in our world.”
It has been a whirlwind of a decade for Schmidt. It takes sacrifices, including being away from his wife for 47 days during the World Cup, but there’s no questioning he’s living his dream with more adventures sure to come.
“When I started out, I had no idea where this would take me, or if I’d even still be in the industry right now,” Schmidt said. “Olympics, World Cup, there’s not a whole lot bigger stage that you can be on for sure. I’m really lucky to have gotten to film all the things that I have.”
Source: CFISD
