About Dave

Dave Verso began his research on youth sports in the late 1990s.  It was part of his preparation for designing and implementing two distinct and successful versions of developmentally based pilot programs in AYSO around the year 2000.  He was helped by Robert M. Malina, an expert in growth and maturation who helped pioneer the concept of grouping youth athletes by maturation, often called bio-banding.  Malina was one of the key figures in the English Premier League’s mid-2010 bio-banding pilot programs, which have now been integrated into the league's current programs and those of others.

Dave had the good fortune to observe many good youth coaches across multiple sports.  His soccer coaching mentors were John Astudillo and Cherif Zein.  Astudillo built a dominant HS program, then took the University of Buffalo from DIII to a top 20 ranking in DI.  When Dave started coaching with Zein, 5 of the 30 11- and 12-year-old boys in the club that year were eventually selected for the US U18 national team pool.  Dave’s last team as a full-time coach started in U10 bronze (the lowest of 3 tiers).  Every player who stayed all three years eventually played in Premier (the highest of 5 tiers), and the last team he trained went unscored upon as U16 boys Surf Cup Champions that season. 

Dave’s older son, Eric, scored 14 goals in 6 games to help his team win the U13 regional championships, was a league MVP on his state-champion high school team as a sophomore, and had a goal and the game-winning assist for Stanford in the NCAA men’s soccer national championship game. His younger son, Mark, advanced more slowly in soccer because he was much less focused on his athletic development and more interested in baseball until high school.  Even so, Mark was also a league MVP as a high school sophomore and a collegiate national champion at Stanford.   Mark was second in the nation in goals each of his two seasons in the PDL (the de facto U23 league at that time). 

After completing a BA in Electrical Engineering and an MBA focused on management of technology and innovation, Dave joined the executive team of a small company pushing the limits of how nascent virtual reality technology could be applied to real-world problems. He switched careers to a more hands-on technical role, where he successfully designed and implemented customized solutions for organizations, including Amazon, Kaiser Permanente, Warner Brothers, and the County of Los Angeles .