Central Michigan University Athletics
Remembering And Honoring A Friend
9/20/2016 12:00:00 AM | Soccer
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - The eight words served as her mantra: What would you do if you weren't afraid?
Someday, Christie Chiesa may wear those words. The Central Michigan senior is considering a tattoo, perhaps on an ankle. She's always been a little conservative, a tad on the cautious side.
She doesn't need the visual affirmation. Those words remain deep in her soul, as does everything about her late best friend, Josie Seebeck. Seebeck's journal contained that inspirational line, What would you do if you weren't afraid?
"I think about her every single day, multiple times a day," Chiesa said of Seebeck, her former teammate who was killed in an August 2013 car wreck on the eve of her and Chiesa's sophomore season on the CMU soccer team. "We were like sisters. She's as much a part of me as the organs in my body."
Chiesa, now a senior, was named last week the winner of the Enberg Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award, which is presented annually to a Chippewa in his or her senior year who has performed with distinction in their sport and is a team leader.
The award is named for CMU alum and sports broadcasting legend Dick Enberg, long a champion of academic achievement among student-athletes. Chiesa is an exercise science major who carries a 4.0 grade point average. She has served as the community service chair for the National Society of Leadership and Success and is immersed in a research project at CMU on the effects of interval training. Among her many endeavors was a medical missions trip with the Fellowship of Catholic University Students to Argentina.
That's the kind of work Chiesa hopes to make a career.
It's the kind of work she and Seebeck used to talk about doing together.
A tribute
Christie Chiesa stands on the concrete, just off the turf of the new CMU Soccer-Lacrosse Stadium. It's a late-summer Saturday morning, breezy, the temperature comfortably in the high 60s.
It is on that field that Chiesa and her teammates will beat Oakland a little over 24 hours later, improving to 8-0-0, the best start in program history.
Chiesa is merely feet from the tree planted in Seebeck's memory - and the accompanying plaque - when the stadium opened. The tree survived its first Mount Pleasant winter.
Chiesa goes back to August 2013, when she, Seebeck and teammate Maddy Bunnell were driving from Indianapolis after watching an exhibition match featuring Chelsea of the English Premier League.
"I was the driver; I was in someone's blind spot going past them," Chiesa said. "They must not have seen me and just kind of came over halfway into our lane."
The car in which the student-athletes were riding rolled into the median. Seebeck, riding in the backseat, was killed. Chiesa ended up in the hospital intensive care unit, a bruised lung and a brain hemorrhage among her injuries. Bunnell suffered a concussion.
"I don't even remember getting in the car that day," Chiesa said. "I can't remember even a week after being home from the ICU."
Starting back
Chiesa missed the entire 2013 season, taking a medical redshirt while she recovered. But it wasn't just missing a season on the field, or the prospect of not attending classes, that was most frightening.
"I was told it wouldn't be smart for me to go back to school that year, let alone that semester," she said. "Hearing that I might not be the same student, or potentially the same person, that I was before was kind of a scary thing. It really put soccer in perspective."
Chiesa, however, did make it back for classes that fall, and she rejoined the team. She couldn't practice, couldn't play in games, but she was there as she and her teammates struggled to cope with Seebeck's death.
"The support here, and the three F's: Faith, Family and Friends," Chiesa said. "I can honestly say that without those three it would have been a completely different picture."
"It was hard. There were certain things in my memory that weren't as good as before, so I really had to work hard at it. I was really fortunate to be able to stay so close to the team. I couldn't play. I wasn't able to run or jog or raise my heart rate until November because of all the brain stuff going on."
She eventually made it back on the field in spring 2014, healthy enough to compete and play. And with a grateful attitude.
"You're never the same after something like that, and I pray no one ever has to go through that, but you do see a huge meaning behind it and the joy that you get in little things," she said. "Just putting my cleats on for the first practice and passing the ball, and having my team around me, and being able to go out there and joke with them and go hard into tackles.
"It's little things - it was like the best feeling in the world. It just felt like a piece of you was back."
Yes, Chiesa was back, but she was forever changed, and there was an effect on all connected to the program.
"I think the piece that I've learned from Christie is that you have to play the cards that you're dealt," CMU coach Peter McGahey said. "You learn from the circumstances that life presents and you have to draw on your own courage. It's the quote, stress or adversity doesn't create character, it reveals it."
Building to this
Chiesa, who is almost assured of making her third consecutive appearance on the Academic All-MAC team this fall, and the Chippewas begin Mid-American Conference play on Friday at Northern Illinois.
CMU, which has not won a league championship since 2010, has been building to this type of season since Peter McGahey took over as coach in January 2013.
Among the players on the roster when he arrived were freshmen Christie Chiesa and Josie Seebeck, along with Eliza Van de Kerkhove, Taylor Potts and Bunnell.
Bunnell earned her degree last spring and is taking graduate courses at Mount St. Mary's in Maryland, playing her final year of collegiate soccer. Potts scored the goal in Sunday's 1-0 victory over Oakland.
Chiesa, Bunnell, Van de Kerkhove, Potts and Seebeck were, and continue to be, major building blocks as McGahey's system has taken root.
Just as the tree planted in Seebeck's memory has.
"You come to a fork in the road," Chiesa said, recalling her recovery, "And I can let this shape me for the worst, or I can let this shape me for the best and live my life in the way that Josie would have wanted. She would have been punching me in the face if I did anything else."
Chiesa and McGahey described Seebeck has having possessed a certain grittiness. Some call it chutzpah, others guts. Whatever it is, it's unquantifiable, but it's as necessary to success in the athletic arena as is size, speed and talent.
What would you do if you weren't afraid?
"She was as gritty as they come when it comes to players, and that was something we've instilled in our team, and that has made us so successful particularly this year," Chiesa said. "We're just into people from the get-go.
"She's looking down smiling, probably patting herself on the back for that one because she was a huge inspiration to me on the field. I loved playing with her, and I know that she'd just be telling us to keep doing what we're doing and keep that passion and that grit going."
It's also been a constant reminder to Chiesa, and Seebeck lives on in her heart, and her attitude.
"It's kind of guided my life because sometimes I live a little more on the safe side, kind of reminding me to live life to its fullest," Chiesa said. "It's just keeping her with me and every time we go out on the field, the same grit, passion, perspective on what's important. That's keeping her alive."
And maybe, to a certain degree, it keeps reminding Christie Chiesa to keep living.
