Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol and his wife, Amber Marmol, are calling from Jupiter, Florida, during spring training. A game has just wrapped up, and the couple is excited to talk about a new project they’re launching next month: VS (pronounced Versus), a sports edtech app. VS will allow users to watch sessions on skills taught by Fernando Tatís Jr., Jessica Mendoza, and Albert Pujols—think: MasterClass but make it baseball—and will use conversational AI to allow viewers to ask questions. The Marmols are also using the platform to give back.
The app was inspired by a trip to Guatemala the couple took in 2011, when Oliver was a player in the minor leagues. There, they visited an orphanage. The extreme poverty they witnessed motivated them to think of a way to give back. “We had given on a really small scale,” Amber remembers. “Our few dollars were able to go a little way and make an impact on that community, which was nice, but it was temporary. We thought, What if we could start a company that could sustain itself [and give back]?”
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Around that same time, Oliver was transitioning from a player to coach. Parents approached him for lessons, and he learned that the quality of some online instruction was poor. And it wasn’t just because it was filmed on an iPhone in a garage. “There were a lot of people who weren’t experts but who were claiming to be experts,” he says. He wanted to hear from elite athletes and their coaches. Those lessons will be the hour-and-a-half sessions on VS, which is geared toward young athletes.
For VS, the Marmols decided to include lessons not just on athletic skills but also give a window into the mindset of star players. How to deal with adversity, how to deal with failure, and even how to deal with success will be topics of discussion. Amber says that social media and the comparison game that often accompanies it inspired them in part to include talks on emotional intelligence. Oliver adds: “I’ve seen a lot of players who have big league talent and minor league mentalities that never make it to the big leagues, and I’ve seen a lot of guys who have very average talent and elite mentality who not only get to the big leagues but also stay there for a long time.”
When the app launches in mid-April (a few details, like pricing, are still being worked out), the Marmols plan to donate 10 percent of revenue to causes in the areas of sports, education, and nutrition that help children in the United States. They’re also donating 50,000 subscriptions to underserved youth.
Visit stlmag.com for more information when VS launches.
