Tony Dodero -- From the Newsroom

There’s an old story about how legendary Alabama football coach Paul

“Bear” Bryant responded when once asked about his school’s basketball

team.

“I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no round ball,” he drawled.

Enter Costa Mesa attorney Kirk McIntosh, now sitting atop the world as

the king of Newport-Mesa youth soccer after masterminding the

just-concluded Pilot Cup.

The soccer tourney among Newport-Mesa third-, fourth-, fifth- and

sixth-graders saw some 71 teams battle it out on the grass over the last

three days.

But the curious thing is that McIntosh is no more likely a proponent

of the art of the round ball as the late football coach was.

“I didn’t play soccer,” he says. “I didn’t know anything about soccer.

I played football, basketball, and baseball. When I first started

coaching soccer, I used basketball terminology. But eventually, I became

a student of the game.”

He certainly has.

The Southern California native grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and

attended Cal Poly Pomona, where he played one year of football and four

years of baseball. His baseball team won the Division II National

Championship in his senior year.

He married, Suzanne, and moved here in 1977, giving birth to five

daughters along the way. It was when one of his daughters was attending

California Elementary that the family received a flier from the American

Youth Soccer Organization.

On a whim, he signed his oldest daughter up and the rest is history.

All five of his daughters play soccer: Terra, a Newport Harbor High

grad; Krista, a Newport Harbor sophomore; Ashley, an eighth-grader at

Ensign Intermediate; Alexandra, a fifth-grader at Kaiser Elementary; and

Courtney, who’s now playing Region 97 AYSO.

“Mom, of course, is the classic soccer mom,” he said. “Soccer has been

a major impact in our lives.”

McIntosh himself has been playing in a men’s league for five years,

daughter Terra is on the team at UC Santa Barbara, and his nephew Joey

Franchino plays professional soccer.

The only one who doesn’t have the soccer bug big in the family is

Krista, who is on the junior tennis circuit.

McIntosh, who at the urging of former Daily Pilot editors Bill Lobdell

and Steve Marble started the Pilot Cup in the footprints of the defunct

Lions Cup soccer tourney, said he always knew the event would be a hit.

“I am not surprised it has grown,” he said. “I know the area pretty

well. I know the key movers and shakers in the soccer community. And I

knew the kids were there. There are tons of kids who play soccer. People

are already saying, ‘I want to help you next year. Let me know what I can

do.”’

The only elementary schools that didn’t field teams this year were

Killybrooke, Adams, Pomona and Whittier, but he doesn’t think it will be

long before that also changes.

“Next year, I anticipate having to do this for an entire week,” he

said. “Eventually, it will tap out at 100 teams and then there is the

prospect of bringing back the junior highs.”

One of the key successes to this year’s tournament, he said, is the

city’s Costa Mesa Farm soccer field.

“You have all these teams playing all day long and you get this sense

of a major tournament,” he said.

With more than a thousand kids tearing up the farm soccer fields these

last few days, I get the sense that ito7 isf7 a major tournament

already.

And for that, the city leaders who had the vision to purchase that

piece of land from the school district and turn it into a soccer complex

and McIntosh, of course, are all owed a great deal of thanks.

Long live the Pilot Cup.

* TONY DODERO is the editor. His column appears on Mondays. If you

have story ideas or concerns about news coverage, please send messages

either via e-mail to tony.dodero@latimes.com or by phone at 949-574-4258.