Davis AYSO Boys U19 League
Team DAV-U19B-03
Meet the Coach


Hi, my name is Daniel Cebra. This fall, I will be the coach for the DAV-U19B-03 soccer team in the Boys U19 league of Davis AYSO. This will be my eigth season as a coach for an AYSO team and third season coaching at the U19 level. I started coaching with AYSO as an assistant coach in 1997 when my son first started playing soccer as a U8. I have enjoyed coaching and watching the boys grow up.

This may not come as a great surprise to anyone, but I am not a professional soccer coach. Although I must say that the AYSO training has improved over the years. During the day time, I am a physics professor at UC Davis. When I am not teaching, I study relativitic heavy-ion collisions - my research site these days is at Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island, New York (hence the seemingly endless trips to New York). If you want to learn more about smashing nuclei you can check out my research group's web site.

So... What experience do I have? I played soccer for two years at the high school level, but was never particularly talented as a player. As a graduate student at Michigan State University('84-'90), I started organizing department sports teams. We played soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter and softball in the spring. I quickly learned that my biggest contribution to the team was as the coach and manager. I arrived at UCD in 1993, and I have continued to organize teams here every year. For the most part, physicists are not as athletic the general population, but we have had some successes: winning the Grad-Staff-Faculty basketball Championship in winter 2000 and the Grad-Staff-Faculty Softball championship in spring 2002.