“It’s like a chess match inside the volleyball match”: From STU volleyball to England National Team

Written for The Aquinian

(‘Strategy’ by Incé Husain)

Five years ago, Christian Christie arrived at STU to pursue volleyball. Now graduated, he is building his volleyball career in England, playing professionally for the England National Team.

The opportunity was sparked by correspondence between STU’s men’s volleyball coach Henri Mallet and a sports agent who recruits North American student athletes for European sports - a prime way to begin going pro.

Christie shares that playing professionally has introduced him to athletes who "(get) those nuances of that next level". He describes the professional game as strategy-intensive beyond his experiences as a student athlete, comparing the mental level to "a chess match".

“It’s like a chess match inside of the volleyball match. The mental side of it is huge,” says Christie. “You constantly have to be taking in information and trying to process it as quickly as you can. The speed that you have to process that to be successful (on court) is quicker than at the university level for sure.”

Also set to play for the University of Essex as a student athlete, Christie hopes to relay these insights to the university team. He says that, in his experience, university teams habituate to a select set of strategies as they gain familiarity with their opponents, while professional teams constantly shift things on court to “get the guys out of their rhythm”. He shares that he flew to Slovakia with some athletes from the national team for training, and mostly faced new teams throughout.

“All the teams we played in Slovakia - we had never played any of them before,” says Christie. “(At STU) a lot of times we’d set up fairly similar, around the same spot (if a strategy worked well). At the next level… even if we got a good pass, we would just always shift a little bit to give (the opponents) a slightly different picture to look at so they never get too comfortable and never see the same thing twice. That’s something different I noticed right away.”

Based in Colchester - an hour East of London - Christie says he is settling well. He began training a few days upon arrival on August 12th, says the pre-season at the university of Essex will begin soon, and has grasped the lingo of English volleyball - where middles run an “A, B, C” instead of the Canadian “50, 60, 30”. He associates well with his teammates, has family in London, and finds he knows the area, though he has been adjusting to the large, steadily populating Essex campus.

“I’m just getting used to the bigger campus, having more students, bigger classes, getting used to the new surroundings,” says Christie. “But it’s been fantastic - everyone I’ve met so far has been really, really nice.“

Christie reminisces on his time at STU with gratitude, summarizing it as a “small university, big opportunity”. He shares that he met most of his closest friends while at STU, and that he is nostalgic for the close-knit community.

“It’s so different adjusting to being in a different spot without those people that you’ve met who are such good friends, and you’d just gotten used to them being there and seeing them all the time,” says Christie. “The community at STU - especially on the volleyball team, you miss them, and obviously coaching staff too.”

He considers his athletic and academic journey at STU to have been an integrated venture. Older team members and professors would help athletes with time management, coaching staff would set “challenges” for their athletes to work towards scholarships, and athletes would participate in weekly team study hall sessions.

“We had a fairly good (academic) team attitude - we all wanted to excel on court and off the court,” Christie says. “For me it was never really ‘volleyball and school separate’, it was always a package of trying to be a good student athlete and trying to get the most out of the academics as you could, as well as the athletic side of it.”

Christie completed a double major in criminology and psychology at STU. At Essex, he will be continuing his psychology studies, pursuing a Master’s in Sports and Exercise Psychology.

“I wouldn’t change how anything went,” Christie says. “Looking back over the past five years and how far (STU’s athletic) program’s come - it’s been really cool to look back on this year.” ♦

A modified version of this article appeared in The Aquinian on September 22nd, 2022:

https://theaquinian.net/its-like-a-chess-match-from-stu-volleyball-to-the-england-national-team/