Men's soccer

The English teacher: 22 years after coming to U.S., McIntyre continues to build coaching resume in upstate New York in 5th year at SU

Logan Reidsma | Staff Photographer

Ian McIntyre, now in his fifth year as Syracuse's head coach, grew up in England and came to the United States in 1992 to play at Hartwick College.

All they needed was a ball and a couple of shirts to throw down as goal posts.

The kids from the neighborhood of Basildon, England —a gathering of six to 16 kids, including Ian McIntyre —wouldn’t let much stop them from playing soccer. Not the next-door neighbor who once chased them with a hammer to shoo them away, not the complaints of denting garage doors and not the bigger kids who kicked the “snot” out of the younger ones.

Born into a culture that eats, sleeps and breathes soccer, McIntyre fit right in.

“Knock on their door, get mom’s permission or not and go out and play football,” McIntyre said. “Your wallpaper is normally a particular team and your Christmas presents are shampoo with a particular team logo on it. Growing up, it was a big part of who I am.”

Twenty-two years ago, McIntyre and his outgoing personality left England for Upstate New York. It was where his college career took place and his coaching coaching career has taken off.



Now in his fifth year leading the SU men’s soccer team, he jokes that he’s a man without a country because both sides think he “talks funny.”The “big, British lump,”as junior goalkeeper Alex Bono called him, knows how to balance his sense of humor with hard work —though he doesn’t always have the best jokes, Bono added.

But behind the playfulness is a head coach who has turned the Syracuse program around and is adored by his players for it.

“Mac is easily the smartest coach I’ve ever been around and ever worked with,” Bono said. “I knew that even though Syracuse wasn’t a top program when I came in — I knew that coach Mac would lead us there.”

McIntyre first joined a competitive soccer team at the age of 7. Then, he became a captain of his schoolboy team before playing for an Arsenal FC youth team when he was 15, later being selected to play on an England Southern team against an England Northern team.

But when a scout approached a late teenaged McIntyre and said to him, “Look, you’re not good enough,”he knew his dreams of playing professionally weren’t going to happen.

“As difficult as the words are, it allows you to focus and ultimately, it motivates you and you look to prove people wrong,” McIntyre said.

Just after turning 18, he chose to leave England and his family —which remains in the country —in 1992 for Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. The transition was seamless, McIntyre said, because the community embraced international players and the support was there —and now he does his best to mirror that same support with his own players, international or not.

His adjustment was made that much easier by the company of Matt Lawrence, a teammate from the England Under-18 team who also ventured to Hartwick and roomed with McIntyre in all four years. As a student, McIntyre made his high GPA look effortless, Lawrence said in an email.

And on the pool table, they formed a “pretty mean”doubles team, he added.

“Obviously we played by English rules, which seemed to cause some consternation with the indigenous folk,” said Lawrence, who enjoyed a lengthy professional career in England. “We had a lot in common and would sit for hours shooting the breeze and remembering times back home.

On the pitch, McIntyre was a force. The Hawks were undefeated, 16-0-1, when McIntyre scored and he earned All-American honors as a senior. He netted 18 goals with 10 assists in his four-year career and scored game-winning goals in back-to-back NCAA tournament games in 1993.

“His contributions as a player were extraordinary,” said Matt Verni, a first-year assistant coach for SU and a college teammate of McIntyre’s. “Not only his leadership and organizational abilities, his communication skills are the best I’ve ever seen even to this day for a college player.”

After finishing his college career and earning his MBA as an assistant coach at Fairfield (Connecticut), the opportunity to become the head coach at Oneonta at the age of 24 fell into McIntyre’s lap. He led the Red Dragons to three consecutive 10-win seasons.

Then the chance to take over his alma mater’s program half a mile down the road surfaced in 2003 and McIntyre seized it, making what he called a move without having to move.

He led Hartwick to a 15-2-1 record that year and an NCAA tournament appearance in 2005. The Hawks had just two losing seasons out of the seven McIntyre coached them.

But when SU, which went 3-15 in 2009, came calling in 2010, all McIntyre knew of Syracuse were the bus rides he had taken to SU and the games he had played in the Carrier Dome.

“It wasn’t something immediately that I thought was the right decision,” he said, “but the more my wife and I kind of investigated it and researched it, the more and more we realized that this was the right time for a challenge.”

McIntyre has labored through some growing pains —going 5-22-6 through his first two seasons — but the future is bright as his program returns nearly all of its players for a second go-round in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“Mac has a magnetic personality. If you are not touched after meeting him, then you have a heart of stone,” said Lawrence, McIntyre’s former teammate. “He’s an intelligent, engaging human being and that’s just away from the soccer field. Put him on the soccer field and you can add a hard-working, pragmatic leader to the equation.

“As much as Mac is lucky to have such a high-profile job at Syracuse, Syracuse is very lucky to have a coach such as Mac.”





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