SAN DIEGO — In 2018, San Diego men's soccer made a unique coaching change that had little precedent in college athletics. Brian Quinn, who had spent 11 seasons as Seamus McFadden's assistant coach, was promoted to head coach. And McFadden, who had held that job for the previous 39 years, stayed on as Quinn's assistant. 

You might think of that as a fun trivia question, or a little note before the real story starts, but people within the program know that it's closer to the method for so much that came after that.

"Seamus provided knowledge, experience and a great foundation for me to understand the college game and its ebbs and flows," Quinn said, pointing to little differences in the college game, all things a lifelong pro like Quinn had seldom managed from the touchline. McFadden didn't disappear once the titles started arriving either.

"He continued to provide guidance when I became the head coach," Quinn added, "and he gave me a hands-off approach to let me select the starting group and supported me in all aspects of the program."

A legendary coach handed his program to his own assistant and then spent years making sure the handoff worked. That's not the norm in sports. It is, increasingly, starting to look like one of the many reasons USD men's soccer has had the success that it has. 

San Diego won nine WCC titles under McFadden before Quinn took the helm, dating back to the program's first in 1992, but it hadn't won another since 2015. His first season in charge, 2018, ended with a fourth-place conference finish. Then came 2019, which was unremarkable, a shortened 2020 season, and then 2021, where the Toreros went 2-15, but USD stuck with its process, and its coach kept building.

What Quinn has built at USD isn't a scheme. If you ask him what has sustained the run they are on he doesn't reach for a tactical strategy but instead he goes to a filter in his recruiting. Recruit players with technical ability and true soccer intelligence, yes, but also players who "genuinely want to be at the University of San Diego," he said. That filter is easy to state and hard to actually apply, and it shows up in how differently each of the last four championship rosters was built. In 2022 the group leaned on continuity through a veteran core that included Ross Johnstone, Mason Tunbridge, and Rhys Gourdie setting the tone in preseason for a freshman class that included Vicente Ayala, Josh Martinez, Cesar Bahena, and Samy Kanaan. "That experience and the freshmen were the foundation of the future success," Quinn said of the group that ended up going 6-0-1 in conference that year to deliver WCC title No. 1 of their current run.

2022 was about assembling the right pieces, but 2023 was about what Quinn did with them once the roster was set. Rather than lean on more transfers or a heavier preseason at home, Quinn took the team to Argentina for 10 days. "We were immersed in a soccer culture for 10 days and had the opportunity to play five games against quality competition," he said. This detail says as much about Quinn's own soccer background — a professional who played 16 seasons, including earning 48 caps for the U.S. Men's National Team — than it does about the team. The goal of the trip wasn't just to sharpen the players technical skills, he wanted them to understand soccer as a game, as something bigger than a schedule of 18 games. The Toreros came home and finished the season at 11-4-4, clinching a second straight title behind a trio of Tunbridge, Bahena, and Kanaan in attack. 

By 2024, the machine was self-sustaining in a way that it had much more to do with the pipeline of the program itself and less about any single trip or transfer class.

"Our recruiting was ongoing, and non-stop," Quinn described. "Coaches (Mike) Nicholson and (Frankie) Sanfilippo were relentless and diligent in pursuing players who would fit with our USD culture."

That phrase about the USD culture, is doing more work than it appears. The coaching staff added transfers Jack Sandmeyer and Inigo Villaldea, both players that Quinn calls "changemakers," and much of the 2024 story was the breakout of goalkeeper Donovan Parisian, who became the first goalkeeper selected in the MLS SuperDraft following that season. USD went 15-3-2 overall, 7-1-1 in conference play, and all the way to a second-round win at Duke before an overtime loss to eventual national champion Vermont, ending their run one game short of the final eight. 

This sets up part of the story that Quinn seems the proudest of. Heading into 2025, with a fourth straight title within reach and every incentive to talk about history, Quinn switched the mentality.

"Our focus was not four-in-a-row, but instead just to win this year's WCC Championship," he said. "The other three were history, and now it was time to send out our seniors with a year to remember."

San Diego lost its season opener at Duke, but didn't lose again for 10 straight matches, closing conference play at 7-1-1, enough for a fourth straight WCC title, which was sealed on the road at Oregon State in a scrappy 4-2 victory that Quinn still calls one of the best games of the entire run.

"Hats off to our seniors for doing it and creating history," he said.

It's a strange kind of discipline, but refusing to talk about the streak may have been exactly what kept it alive. 

None of it, to Quinn's account, belongs to him alone. He points even past his own staff, to his academic support coordinator JoAnn Vallese, to Dr. Lorri Sulpizio's work developing the student and staff leadership, to their faculty representative Mitch Malachowski, all the way to an alumni base he calls superb in its support. But most importantly, a leadership group inside the locker room that the players choose for themselves, one that polices the teams standards for training, respect for the university, and for work in the classroom.

"The four years of success were created by our players and their total commitment to our team," Quinn reflected. 

It's worth remembering that Quinn often describes coaching at USD as closer to a vocation than a job, a place he wants to leave better than when he found it. Four straight WCC titles is certainly one way to measure that, and it's proof that anyone can point to.

A program that handed the keys to an assistant, stayed loyal when things got tough, and ended up being the first team in West Coast Conference soccer history to pull off a four-peat.

And they're still going.