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Now, a dozen years after that, McIntyre and his Rio Rancho Rams, the team he’s coached since the 1997-98 season, are headed back to the state tournament.
And David McIntyre and his wife, Jean, will be sitting behind the Rams’ bench later this week at the Santa Ana Star Center to follow the exploits of their son as he leads RRHS in the postseason.
 Jean and David McIntyre watch a Rams JV game, prior to the varsity taking the floor. |
Heck, David McIntyre remembers playing Santa Claus when his bride-to-be played Mrs. Claus when they were in second grade together.
“I was smitten with him,” Jean McIntyre said before a recent Rams game. David recalled walking past his future bride’s house every time he walked to St. Mary’s.
They weren’t dating back then, but they were an item to be sure.
Wasn’t he ever worried she’d become smitten with another fella?
“They knew better,” he said of any rivals. “They’d get their ass kicked.”
Jean saved programs and newspaper articles that reported on the fortunes of St. Mary’s — David played quarterback (as a 145-pounder) and played in the 1947 North-South All-Star Game at Zimmerman Field and was a guard on the basketball team — and although the old newspaper pages have yellowed, their memories are still keen.
David McIntyre wasn’t the only member of his family to star on the Cougars’ athletic teams: There were Robert (1926-27), Johnny (1932-33), Boleslo “Bozo” (1936-38, who flew B-29s over Japan in WWII)), Duncan (1939-41), Billy (1943, ’47), Craigie (1945-48), Pado (1947-50) and David (1943-46), whom legendary St. Mary’s coach Babe Parenti called “one of the finest defensive backs I have coached.”
In the family scrapbook, containing countless clippings, one 1946 headline catches the eye: “McIntyres, Ayalla (sic) Star As Cougars Beat Menaul 38-2.” The nine-inch story below it tells how David scored twice on quarterback sneaks, Billy scored a TD on an end run, Craigie “scooted the ball for 33 yards” to set up a score, and David caught a single-point conversion pass from Billy. Billy and David were All-City first-teamers by season’s end.
Back then, St. Mary’s got a lot of ink in the Albuquerque Tribune and Albuquerque Journal. The city was smaller, and only Albuquerque High, Menaul School and the Albuquerque Indian School vied for sports coverage on the high school scene. When the Cougars and AHS Bulldogs squared off in basketball, the teams would play at Carlisle Gym on the campus of the University of New Mexico. District and state tournament games were often held there too, in the forerunner to Johnson Gym, which opened in 1957.
The family lived in a modest home near the corner of 5th and New York Avenue, later renamed Lomas Boulevard.
“My mom was a cheerleader and the homecoming queen,” Bob McIntyre said. “My dad actually stayed back one year in school and he claims the nuns liked him so much they kept him back. Literally, him and my mom virtually have been together since first grade … they were sweethearts from the first time they met.”
Later married and raising a family of their own, sports remained an integral part of their lives together.
“My dad owned a windshield business, Sandia Glass, and from the time we grew up my dad was shooting hoops, throwing the football, coaching a Little League baseball game,” “Bobby Mac” recalled. “We grew up with sports. My passion for sports definitely is a result of my mom and my dad.”
His mom would even drive the team her son was on at Our Lady of Assumption and his teammates, “in an old, blue Ford station wagon” to their games at the Boys Club in Old Town.
Today, he says, “I don’t think I’m much different than my players. I love to have my parents at the games. Probably one of the reasons I’ve stayed in coaching so long is (because) they followed my games since I was an athlete playing to when I was coaching eighth grade. It didn’t matter if you were an assistant.
“I’ve been very lucky in terms of the success I’ve been able to enjoy,” he continued. “You stay in it long enough — we’d had some down years in Moriarty — we had to build a program — and it helps to have your family support and encourage you. The special moments are at the state tournament.
“Along with my wife and my daughter, I look for my parents — those are the people who are my support system,” he said. “Coaching keeps me young and getting out to the games has kept them young and going.
“In terms of best advice, I can say my parents always had ‘good game.’ You played hard. There wasn’t a lot spoken, there wasn’t deep analysis as to what the coaches did or didn’t do. They understood athletics was a key part of education — a lot of lessons you learned from winning and losing.”
Jean McIntyre remembers driving her son’s basketball team to its games at the Old Town Boys Club.
“All of us kids went to Our Lady of Assumption,” Bob McIntyre recalled. “The only league for us was at the Boys Club. Mom would pile all of the Assumption kids into a blue Ford station wagon.”
“She wore out three station wagons driving those kids,” David McIntyre joked.
Later, when Bob became a head coach, Jean said she remembers him telling her, “Mom, you can sit behind the bench but don’t tell me what to do.”
Perhaps her best advice was this: “I told Bobby, ‘You’ve got a good team but it still takes luck.’ There are a lot of good teams out there.”
It’s been a good life for Bob McIntyre, whose support group includes his wife Melissa and daughter Sarah, who used to tape his team’s games until she graduated RRHS.
“I felt like I always had everything I ever needed and, in comparison to kids growing up today, I don’t think there would’ve been 11 cell phones, 11 iPods,” he said. “We had each other to go out in the backyard, share chores. For my brother and I, it was the bathroom and the kitchen floor. We got our 50-cent allowance each week, if you did it. They stressed education but they were never to a point where they got overzealous and you had to get that ‘A.’ You had to do your best.
Greatest gift they gave me, in my opinion, was my Catholic religious background.”
So seeing his parents at every game, win or lose — there’s been a lot more winning this season — has been a blessing.
The couple seemingly can’t get enough basketball, often arriving in time to see the second half of the junior varsity game.
“It’s in our blood,” Jean McIntyre said.
“You’re only young once,” added David. “Hell, we used to drive to Moriarty. This (drive to Rio Rancho) is nothing.”
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