McIntosh responds, dispatches Cottle

COSTA MESA — Alex McIntosh has a bit of a modest reason for why she doesn’t play soccer anymore, and instead competes in tennis.

“I was kind of too small to play soccer and I got pushed around a lot,” McIntosh said in a phone interview.

On the tennis court, McIntosh, who will be a senior at Newport Harbor High, knows how to push back. That’s what she did on Monday at the Costa Mesa Tennis Center.

In the girls’ 18 singles division, she defeated Ana Cottle of Orange, 3-6, 6-0, 6-4, in a Round of 32 match of the 15th annual Costa Mesa Summer Junior Classic.

“Every thing was out of sync,” McIntosh said of the first set. “Then I figured out how she was playing and it got better.

“I was playing into her game. We had long rallies, but then I was stepping into it more and being more aggressive. Just stepping up more.”

Back when McIntosh was a freshman at Harbor, she had to step up then, too. She had a big decision to make: give up soccer, the sport she loved since she was a toddler, to focus solely on tennis.

The decision didn’t seem that tough on the surface. A few years earlier, her older sister, Krista, had taken the same path of ditching soccer and taking on tennis.

But then again, turning away from the sport’s that’s on the pitch might seem incredulous when you consider her father.

McIntosh’s father is Kirk McIntosh, the director of the Daily Pilot Cup, the huge youth soccer tournament which completed its eighth year last month.

Picking tennis over soccer might seem crazy in the McIntosh home, but that’s merely an assumption.

Kirk McIntosh has been supportive of his daughter choosing tennis. He’s looking forward to taking college trips with Alex, one of his five daughters.

Krista recently finished up at UC Santa Barbara, where she played tennis. Alex is also hoping to use tennis to her advantage with college.

“Her older sister paved the way for that,” Kirk McIntosh said. “Alex followed in her footsteps.

“But it was hard for both of them to [leave soccer]. They had very close friends on the team. That was as hard as anything, the relationships. Club soccer, you spend so much time with it. The families spend so much time with each other they become friends; it’s a lot more than soccer. She gave all that up. It was a tough call for her. But she knew she wanted to play tennis.”

She was showing she made the right choice in her win over Cottle. She not only responded from a first-set defeat, but also rallied from a 4-1 deficit in the third set. Alex McIntosh, who is unseeded, will play against Mallory Wilhelms today at 10:30 a.m. at Costa Mesa Tennis Center in a Round of 16 match.

She’ll do her best to make it to the final on Friday at 8 a.m., also at CMTC, but if she doesn’t get there she has plenty to look forward to, including a new coach at Newport Harbor.

Former Sailors standout Kristen Case, who also played at UC Berkeley, is the new girls’ tennis coach at Newport Harbor, Alex said.

Former coach Fletcher Olson, the school’s girls’ athletic director, will be coaching the junior varsity, taking over for Jeff Thomsen, who gained an assistant job at the University of Miami.

Thomsen was also the head men’s tennis coach at Orange Coast College. But his departure opened the door for Case, who is apparently making the most of her opportunity. She watched Alex compete on Monday. Kirk McIntosh has been pleased with the new coach’s efforts.

“She is showing so much energy,” Kirk McIntosh said.

Alex McIntosh is also proving to be energetic for the Sailors. Even though practices for the Harbor girls’ tennis team don’t begin until next month, the players have been keeping in touch and attending Newport Beach Breakers matches.

They’ve been to five matches at Newport Beach Country Club and plan to go again to the finale on Wednesday.

So much for soccer.

— Steve Virgen