The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Kennedi Christ

Before we get to that bullet, the one fired more than a century ago, on a battlefield in northeast France, the one that had the potential to end this story before it ever had a chance to really get started.

Before that moment near Santa Barbara, some 50 years ago, when an infant, just a few days old and on his way home from the hospital, was shown the Pacific for the first time by his dad, himself a devotee to all that it had to offer, an early baptism into a lifestyle.

Before that day in 1987, when that infant, now 17 years old and living in full the life to which he'd been indoctrinated, placed ninth in the world at an amateur surfing competition on the waters outside Newquay, England.

Before any of that, we start with this: On March 5, 2001, on a day the United Nations estimates more than 360,000 babies were born, Trevor and Erica Christ, already the parents of an easy-going son, Kooper, welcomed a daughter into the world. And nothing has been the same since.

"Our son was so even-keeled. We thought we had it so easy. Then Kennedi came along," says Trevor, whose daughter arrived in Missoula this month, Griz-soccer-player-in-waiting, Sunshine to one, KC to most.

She's a midfielder with size, at 5-foot-8, and athleticism, another blond export from the land that churns them out on an annual basis, ready to fill soccer rosters across the country, almost always for the better.

She's also a work in progress, as are all of second-year coach Chris Citowicki's 11 freshmen, which is how he wants it.

Should a freshman ever arrive to find an easy transition into the program, the coach has either 1) hit the recruiting jackpot or 2) failed to create the team dynamic he intends to build over time.

"My job is to make the current group so good that when freshmen come in, they can't touch them. They can't even get close to them," he says.

"In a sense, I want it to be a nightmare for every single freshman. Then earn it, because the door is open for everybody coming in. You're just going to have to grind and work really hard to get through that door."

The Christs are an ocean-loving family. Walk out the front door of their home in their beloved Encinitas, which sits 25 miles north of San Diego, and it's a mere five-minute walk to water's edge. Across a railroad track, over a hill and there it is, the Pacific.

She was introduced to the water before she ever stepped foot on a soccer field, which might lead you to believe hers is a laid-back approach to life, of beaches and bikinis and the ocean as an easy escape when the challenges of life creep in.

But the water was more than an avocation for Trevor Christ, whose surname rhymes with wrist. It was the setting of his vocation for a decade as a pro surfer, the thing that supported his family until Kooper arrived.

Sure, he surfed in competitions on six of the world's seven continents before he was 19, but it's what it took to get him there, and remain there as a professional for so long, that passed down from father to daughter.

She was made for this.

"He understands the commitment and desire that have to be put into elevating your game to the next level and being the best you can possibly be," Citowicki says of Trevor Christ. "He competed at the highest level, and that's in her as well. She understands the process you have to go through.

"It's just a continuation for her, stepping into this environment. Everything she's been getting at home, she's going to get here. We're going to get a lot out of her, and she is going to impact this conference over time."

And none of it would have had the chance to come about -- not Kennedi playing soccer at Montana, not Trevor rising to as high as No. 64 in the world as a professional surfer -- had that bullet entered Okie Kenneth Cole's neck in a location even fractionally different from where it did.

He was in France, fighting in the Battle of Cunel in September 1918, when he was struck. It wasn't fatal, but it did require that he be sent to a military hospital in San Diego to be made whole again.

And there he -- and the Purple Heart he later received for being wounded by an instrument of war from the hands of the enemy -- remained.

Mary Anne Cole, his daughter, would years later win the heart of Karl Christ, a union which planted at least one branch of the Christ family tree in Southern California, where it still grows, rooted strongly in Encinitas.

Dan Christ, Karl and Mary Anne's son, is the next relevant link in the chain. He is the one who took a love of the water to the next level, and he didn't waste much time passing it down to his son, Trevor.

Family lore says that Dan, on his way from the hospital back to the dorms at UC Santa Barbara, where he lived at the time, pulled off the road with days-old Trevor and showed him the ocean, near one of his favorite spots to surf. It worked.

Trevor made the national team as a surfer at the age of 16, which took him to Newquay, England, where he finished ninth at an international amateur event and led to his elevation to the professional ranks.

The year he became eligible to vote, he competed in events in France, Brazil, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Hawaii. "Pretty crazy when you're 18," he says.

He led that lifestyle -- touring the world, training in Encinitas when he wasn't -- for a decade before putting his boards aside so he could turn his full attention to Kooper. Then Kennedi.

Their kids would always love the water, Trevor and Erica made sure of that, but they needed to find something else for their daughter. "She was like a firecracker," says Trevor, who was an accomplished soccer player himself.

"I think my parents put me in soccer because I had so much energy," Kennedi says. "They were like, just go run around."

Board sports were always there, filling in the gaps in the background. She would compete in surfing events throughout her upbringing and was on the team at La Costa Canyon High.

And there was Big Bear, a two- to three-hour drive away, where those skills translated to snowboarding, another of her loves. And Mammoth Lakes, near Yosemite, where her entire school would go, overtaking the hotel while spending semester break on the slopes.

But nothing was like soccer. "She loved to compete on the field. She just loved it," says Trevor, these days a contractor.

For years she played on competitive teams in the Carlsbad Lightning club, less than 10 miles up the Pacific on the 5. The last two years she headed down the coast, also on the 5, after becoming a member of San Diego's Albion Soccer Club.

It's in San Diego, at a Development Academy event, where Citowicki first saw the player he'd already been communicating with, not long after his hiring less than 15 months ago.

"She had what we wanted. She has the size, she has the athleticism. There is a rawness to her that still needs to develop a little more, but you can tell that over time it's going to lead to a lot," says Citowicki.

"She's good in the air. She's probably going to be one of our better players in the air right off the bat. And she has a heck of a bomb from distance. It's just going to be catching her up to the speed of play at this level, but the potential she has is great."

Last summer the Christs -- father, mother, daughter -- made a trip to Missoula. They returned in the fall for her official visit. It was just what the player, who didn't apply to any schools in Southern California, was looking for.

"I always wanted to go to a school with seasons," she says. "I'm from California beach, and I love that, but I wanted to try something new for college."

Kooper, whose sport was baseball but who also had a second life on the water, whether it was surfing or fishing or diving, is attending a maritime academy in the Bay Area and on his way to having an even closer relationship with the waters of the world upon graduation.

His sister, who very easily can envision the day she returns to the Encinitas area, had no trouble leaving behind what had been her lifelong home base either, as if they'd been programed over the years to look beyond what was right in front of them to what else might be out there.

Of course they grew up hearing stories of their dad traveling to spots around the world. The message: You can see and experience what else is out there, even if you remain emotionally tethered to Encinitas, even if you one day return.

"I have to give them the credit for doing that. Maybe (my background) had something to do with it, but they were always into doing that type of adventurous stuff," Trevor says.

That spirit has led Christ to Montana, where in less than two weeks the defending Big Sky Conference champions will open the season with their first official practice.

In the meantime, almost all 27 of them are around now, preparing, bonding, hinting strongly that last season, their first under Citowicki, was no fluke.

Already it hasn't been easy, which should leave Citowicki nodding his head in delight. Not because Christ isn't good enough but because the coach's returners have set the bar so high.

The San Diego club soccer scene might be red-hot as a recruiting spot, but it's no match for a team on a mission, one that's been working since the moment the scoreboard reading Washington State 5, Montana 1 was turned off that Friday night in early November.

They want to get back there, to that moment, to that opportunity, and this time change the script. The newcomers? They are all playing catchup to a group that's had a head start, both in time and in motivation. It's their job to close the gap as best they can this first year.

"I definitely need to work on some things. The speed of play is different, so is the physical-ness. All of these girls are very strong. I need to get there," Christ says.

Life goes on for her dad, the head of a childless household for the first time since he gave up his professional surfing career more than two decades ago.

He and Erica are putting two kids through college, so his workdays as a contractor are still long, long enough to keep him off the water more than he'd like.

He still competes a few times a year, now in the 50-and-over division in events put on by the Encinitas Boardriders Club. Does he still have it? "Yeah, I still got it. I just can't get rid of it. That's my problem."

Far removed from the spot where his only daughter now calls home, he goes about his days at peace, knowing she is right where she belongs.

"We're just so happy with how she's doing. It was pretty much an easy choice after we went to Montana and talked to Chris and (assistant coach Katie Benz) and they showed us around," he says.

"The coaches are just unbelievable. We're grateful Kennedi is there." And a story that dates back more than a century continues on, unwritten.

University of Montana Athletics

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