Greg Hansen: Ted Schmidt the unlikely ringleader of Tucson's youth soccer scene

Nothing in Ted Schmidt’s early life suggested he would be involved in soccer, and not just involved in soccer, but as iconic Tucson coach Wolfgang Weber says, “Ted is a catalyst, one of those guys who come around once in 100 years.”

Soccer?

“I didn’t see it coming,” Schmidt says.

He has a passion for baseball, and was the president of Canyon View Little League. He was a scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts. He graduated from the UA law school and became a prominent Tucson trial attorney. He is a fisherman of the first rank. He was among the first to buy into Lute Olson’s dynasty, purchasing 10 up-close season tickets, traveling to all of Arizona’s Final Fours.

Schmidt even tried to be a cowboy.

“I entered a rodeo in Apache Junction,” he remembers, laughing. “I was going to be a bareback bronc rider. I stayed on that horse for about two seconds and broke my wrist. That was the end of my rodeo days.”

More? If you’re ever at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, take a look at Chuck Cecil’s plaque. Schmidt — then president of the Southern Arizona Chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame — did the exhaustive legwork to get the Arizona safety inducted into the Hall of Fame.

But about 20 years ago, Schmidt’s youngest daughter, Savanna, became a soccer player and everything changed.

Ted Schmidt is now the president of both FC Tucson Youth soccer and the Pima County Junior Soccer League.

That’s soccer times two and then some. Who does that?

More than anyone, Schmidt was responsible for construction and funding of the Ann Schmidt Kickin’ It Clubhouse, a 4,000-square foot structure that houses FC Tucson Youth Soccer (formerly the Tucson Soccer Academy)

“People ask me if I was a good soccer player and I tell them I never played,” he says. “I didn’t really care for it.’

Now, more than anyone, Schmidt is the caretaker of Tucson’s most successful youth sports program, soccer.

“When we founded the Tucson Soccer Academy, we were leery of lawyers who get involved with huge organizations. Typically, they take them over,” says Weber. “We wanted coaches to run the TSA; we wanted the board dominated by coaches. We didn’t want anyone — parents or lawyers — to hijack the organization, or run it into the ditch.”

“Ted has been exactly the opposite. It’s odd, because I don’t think Ted knew much about soccer at all.”

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Schmidt chuckles when asked about his entry into soccer. “I think I was viewed as a dissident rabble rouser,” he says.

If you stop by Brandi Fenton Park on east River Road you will see a monument to the successful work of Schmidt, Weber and founding coaches Dave Cosgrove and Charlie Kendrick. The Kickin’ It Clubhouse is surely the best of its kind in Southwest youth soccer.

It has a fitness room, a film room, artificial turf, a video room, a physical therapy room, and an area where parents can lounge in a TV room while their kids are playing soccer.

After 18 years of productive soccer — reflected by 31 state championships among Tucson boys and girls high school teams – Schmidt and the TSA high command cut through political boundaries and scored its most grand victory: It merged with its rival, the Tanque Verde Soccer Club a few months ago, to form FC Tucson Youth.

Schmidt then engineered an alliance with Phoenix Rising, a United Soccer League franchise on track to soon get an MLS franchise. The ultimate benefit is that now FC Tucson Youth has enough financial resources to offer scholarships to needy soccer players.

“All of this was huge, just huge, for Tucson soccer,” says Schmidt. “It allows us to affiliate, in part, with the Arizona women’s soccer program. We’ve been trying to make this happen for years.”

Schmidt’s decades as a trial attorney, his get-it-done approach, was vital in getting TSA to merge with the Tanque Verde club and form a super soccer organization of about 2,000 players. Although it seemed like a minor detail, neither club wanted to fully lose its identity.

What would they name this mega soccer organization?

“It was a potential deal-breaker,” Schmidt says. “It was like trying to merge the UA and ASU football programs. There were a lot of sensitivities”

But once Schmidt brokered with Phoenix Rising, both clubs won. FC Tucson Youth solved the identity problem.

What’s next? Schmidt has been tireless in working with city and county officials to get more availability of precious (and limited) soccer facilities in Tucson. He worked so hard that he was granted the right to do the scheduling himself. But that’s not close to the end of it.

“I’ve met with the mayor and many others and asked them to please install more lights,” he says. “You can’t wrap all of this up by 6 in the evening. Now that we’ve got 2,000 kids, it’s going to be hard to ignore us.”

July is Schmidt’s month to do his own kickin’ back. He spends much of the month fly-fishing at his little piece of paradise in Colorado, but the soccer season begins Aug. 1 and it’s go-time again.

“Ted has made people in Tucson understand we’re not the evil empire,” says Weber. “We get along and we’ve stayed true to our mission, which is the development of the kids.

“Where we are now is due, in a large degree, to Ted. I can’t say anything but great things about this guy.”