The Ballad of Jamie Christie

And a Soccer Match That Will Live in Infamy

By Drew Gallagher,

ADVANCE COLUMNIST

Not Drew Gallagher, But You Get the Idea/Baylee Gramling/Unsplash

FIRST PERSON

As the U.S. men’s team continue their World Cup play like true warrior poets, clinching the top spot in Group D and qualifying for the first round of playoffs, it’s only natural that thoughts turn—my thoughts, anyway—to a historic night more than 40 years ago when two lives were forever changed during a soccer match on a repurposed football field at Exeter Township Senior High School in Reiffton, PA.

Mine was one of them. I was in goal.

My career as goalie had started in 1985 when I was a sophomore at Exeter when our starter smoked so much weed before a match that he couldn’t even see the ball, much less save it. My Wally Pipp moment came when a harmless shot bounced over his head and into the net without him ever moving.

Wally Pipp, for those who may not know, was the famously hapless New York Yankee first baseman who elected to sit out a game due to a headache and subsequently lost his starting job to his replacement—the immortal Lou Gehrig.

I was no Lou Gehrig, but by the time I was a senior I was a team captain, firmly entrenched between the pipes and all-too-accustomed to a fusillade of shots on goal, thanks to our porous defense. I once faced 51 shots by Brandywine Heights my junior year—only four found the back of the net, thank you very much—but nothing could have prepared me for what happened that autumn night against Oley Valley and a guy named Jamie Christie.

Christie was a junior striker for Oley, known as an up-and-coming star in Berks County, which other than our Exeter was a hotbed of soccer talent. Christie’s sister was a cheerleader, and before the match one of our players couldn’t stop talking about how hot she was. I wish I could say that it was her distracting presence on the sidelines that vaulted Christie to the cusp of the record books, but the sad truth is that Jamie was just very good and, on that night, we were very bad.

For the past 40 years, I have regaled friends, family, and random people at bars with the story of the greatest scoring night of Jamie Christie’s life—and the worst goalie night of mine. If I was deep into my cups, I might stop talking, sit back in sad reflection, and sigh at the memory of Jamie Christie scoring six goals on me in that one, ignominious match—four of them in a 13-minute second-quarter span. Those moments of self-reflection often drew consoling pats on the back by sympathetic friends, but not always.

My best friend Chris Malinowksi once saw Jamie Christie at the same bar where I was bemoaning my fate. Instead of going over and shoving Christie off his barstool, which a true friend might do, Chris asked Jamie if he’d like to crumple up his beer can. dribble it through my legs, and score yet another goal for old times’ sake.

My only consolation was knowing that Christie had only scored six on me that fateful night, leaving him one shy of the county record, which was seven, and which was subsequently broken the next year when Christie’s teammate Robbie Hoch scored eight, though not against Exeter, thank god, and I was long gone by then anyway.

So aside from an embarrassing headline in the next day’s paper, my night of infamy turned out to be not so famous after all, except in the Christie household.

“That was the most goals I ever scored in a game,” Christie told me when I recently tracked him down. “Even at family barbecues, I never scored six goals against my nephews or the family’s cocker spaniel.”

He shook his head, presumably still in wonder at his great accomplish in high school—at my expense.

“I did not remember hitting one goal so hard that it hit off the crossbar and bounced off the back of your head and went in until you mentioned it,” he continued. “But now that you’ve touched upon it, I do remember my teammates loving that goal and laughing about it after the game.”

My career, and the season, ended a few months after the still-painful Oley game. I won the team MVP award—there weren’t many contenders—and got a couple of college offers that were likely for academic reasons and not because of my abilities in net.

Christie, meanwhile, used that match as a springboard to a career in soccer as he led Oley to the state semifinals the following season and landed a Division 1 scholarship.

He played professionally for three seasons after college before moving to New York City where he is now owner and head coach of the SocRoc youth soccer program.

“We teach little kids, ages 2-12, how to play Soccer,” said Christie, who’s now all grown up and goes by his given name, James. “My philosophy is simple: Make sure the kids have fun and fall in love with the game of soccer. Personally, I fell in love with soccer gradually. Scoring six goals in a game sure was a lot of fun, and in some small way encouraged me to pursue my lifelong passion. So, thank you, Drew!”

So, as you watch the U.S. Men’s National Team move on in the World Cup—and as Pulisic, Freeman, and Balogun become household names—remember that there are many forgotten goalkeepers out there who contributed in small, virtually imperceptible ways, in furthering the development of the sport to the pinnacle it’s reached in America today.

Even if one of those goalkeeper’s contribution was giving up six goals in a high school match 40 years ago, including one that Jamie Christie smashed off the crossbar so hard that it ricocheted in off the back of my head.