John Stevanja

About John Stevanja

My love for USA sports goes all the way back to when I was a little guy, I still barrack for the Boston Celtics in basketball, and I've always been a New York Giants fan in American football. I used to envision myself one day playing in an arena just like many of these teams in the USA professional sports realm. While I dabbled in basketball in high school (I was a terrible shot), and toyed around with the "egg ball" (AKA: American Football) with some mates in the park, my real passion was the round ball, football, or what they term it in the USA...soccer!

I played soccer since I was 6 years of age, and excelled pretty quickly, from the grassroots in Sydney, then into the State Leagues in my early youth. By the time I was 15, my football went to another level. I was fortunate to play in the National Soccer League (NSL) in Australia at a young age, spending my peak formative years playing and training alongside players such as Jason Culina, Jacob Burns, Anthony Seric, Joel & Adam Griffiths to name a very few at powerhouse football club Sydney United, Australia.

I've always been a goalkeeper, and goalkeeping has been a big passion of mine since I started between the sticks when I was 6. During my time in the NSL, I was fortunate to have trained alongside great goalkeepers like Zeljko Kalac, and later as I transitioned over to Marconi Stallions, I trained and played alongside the likes of Ante Covic and Michael Beuachamp to name a few. Over the past 20 years, I have trained and developed many top flight elite goalkeepers, right up to the A-League and Youth National Team levels in Australia. That's right, I'm still a coach at an elite level in Sydney today.

Back to college sports in the USA, how did that come about? Funnily enough, in my early 20's (it was 2004), I was looking for trial and training opportunities in Europe, and during this time, I stumbled across an online 'recruiting database', where coaches or scouts from around the world would post opportunities for trials with their clubs or colleges. I can't recall that website, though, fatefully, I remember that there were many USA college soccer programs listing opportunities to study and play in the USA! I thought, "this is something different"...let's give this pathway a go!

I cooked up a playing CV, and sent it out to the college coaches that were listing opportunities. I received a reply from a coach that week, a guy by the name of Dennis Currier, at a school called the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio Texas, which was an NCAA D2 program back then and nationally ranked. I was excited, but at the same time apprehensive. How did this all work? I had no one that I knew of that had ever played college soccer in the USA...at that time, I had never even been to the USA myself!

The prospect of attending a university in the USA (after I had just finished my Bachelor of Business degree in Sydney), and playing soccer in a country that was really just starting to get some looks from world football seemed a bit out of this world. Their fledgling Major league Soccer competition was a little bit laughable at that time (given they shaped many of their own rules rather than play to the international standard), so I was a bit jaded by the US college system, and didn't really understand how it would benefit me as a soccer player at that time. 

With my sights set on getting back over to Europe, and an opportunity to head to Leicester, and then on to Manchester to train and trial at Bury FC, I kindly refused the scholarship offer from Coach Currier in the USA (we still stay in touch every now and then and have a laugh about that moment I slipped through his fingers).

Today, this decision to not attend a USA college soccer program, was one of my biggest regrets in my sporting career. The problem was, I was simply uniformed, did not have that many great advisors around me to guide me, and the realization hit like a ton of bricks, while I was in the UK, I saw that football can be a very tough gig, even for elite level athletes, when you don't have the right support behind you to manage you and help you pave your career pathway in your chosen sport.

Yes, while in Europe I had a few people that tried to assist, my Mum and Dad knew very little about the world (or business) of football, and there were so many 'agents' out there that touted a good game of getting you a trial, would watch you play, set up a supposed legitimate trial, but then ghost you in the "11th hour" when you tried to call them back, or pretend they never met you, when they were the very ones who watched you play and scouted you in the first place! Yes, I experienced it all. Though, I discovered over time that a lot of my own poor decisions were also significant learning opportunities.

I was blessed from a young age to have traversed the world and played in some pretty impressive places and stadiums as a young athlete I remember playing on the infamous Poljud Stadium, the home ground of Hajduk Split, against Hajduk Split Youth, which was always an amazing memory for me. Playing against Igor Biscan and Dinamo Zagreb was an epic battle and learning curve as well. I'll never forget these memories as a young athlete.

Though, education was always a constant in my household, especially for my parents, who both grew up with very little, from small villages in Croatia...for my parents, education was EVERYTHING! Through my education, I was able to get some great jobs as a young sales guy, and work for top tier technology companies from the USA, and they paid exceptionally well, while also training me intensively in every aspect of running a business.

Naturally, as I grew into sales roles and later managerial roles, I was spending my spare time dabbling away on building websites and blogs, I'm a BIG tech nerd, and technology has always fascinated me. I built a blog called Keeper-Skool.com in 2005 and it went onto great success in competitive goalkeeper and goalkeeper coaching circles, not only locally, but around the world! I also have a passion for fitness and during this time, I became a FISAF certified Fitness Instructor, and also gained my Youth Coaching licenses through Football Federation Australia, and currently also hold my Senior coaching licenses with the FFA.

In 2004, I combined my passion for fitness and goalkeeping and started training young goalkeepers across Sydney privately. I continued to work on my website, plus the day job in technology sales, though, given the success of the site, I decided to create my first e-book, which was called The G-Code: Unlocking the Scientific Secrets to Goalkeeping Success. The e-book I created, acted as a way for me to connect with coaches right across the USA, as these coaches consumed my content the most.

These USA college and pro coaches would inevitably become my early network and the basis on which Upper 90 college became a reality.