First-year Halifax Wanderers striker Christian Volesky didn’t realize how big Canada really is when he drove from his Colorado home to his new home for training camp.
Volesky was so excited when he signed his first Canadian Premier League contract in February that he decided he would hit the road to attend camp. Along the way he would pick up teammate Aidan Daniels in Toronto.
Little did he know, Toronto is nowhere near Nova Scotia.
“I thought when I got to Toronto, I was pretty close,” the 31-year-old Volesky recalled in a recent interview. “I was like, ‘oh man, I got a whole 15 hours from there.’ I didn’t realize how much travelling there would be. It was a long stretch of 30-plus hours.
“But it was an interesting trip. I made a couple stops. I have a sister in Iowa and I met Aidan in Toronto and the weather was fine all the way. I’ve done a few drives like that but that was definitely the longest.”
Volesky, who was raised in Henderson, Nev., and was selected 32nd overall by the Portland Timbers in the 2015 Major League Soccer draft, has had a nomadic professional career. He signed a one-year deal with the Wanderers with a club option for 2025 after eight pro seasons in the USL Championship league and a stint in Iceland.
The centre-forward scored 67 goals spread over stops in Tucson, Ariz., Rochester, N.Y., St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, Colorado Springs and Monterey Bay, Calif.
He most recently spent two seasons at Monterey Bay FC, where he collected 18 goals, after a season with Keflavik IF on the southwest coast of Iceland.
“That was a pretty cool experience,” Volesky said of his year in the Icelandic football league in 2022. “I was persuaded to go there right after COVID. I wanted to try something new. The players there are very good, very technical and strong. It’s a unique league. The population is small but everybody knows you. You could be walking down the street and people will recognize you.
“It was a difficult transition, a little bit like the transition here in Halifax. It’s a little bit foreign to me but so far, it’s gone smoothly.”
Volesky didn’t know much about Halifax or the CPL in general but turned to Daniels, who he played with on the Colorado Springs Switchbacks in the season before the pandemic shut the sports world down.
“I spoke to Aidan a lot about it,” Volesky said of the standout midfielder.
Volesky had other pro opportunities like returning to the USL or playing overseas in Ireland.
“Once I put all of the pros and cons together and speaking to people like Aidan and Patrice (Wanderers head coach Patrice Gheisar), it just seemed liked Halifax was the best fit,” he recalled. “Hopefully I can have success, the team will have success and the decision turns out to be the right one.”
Volesky, who has two games under his belt in the CPL, said the league and the USL Championship – a tier below the MLS – are “relatively similar.”
“The game here is a bit more tactical, slower than the USL,” Volesky said. “It’s probably a bit more athletic in America too. The talent is similar, but in the USL, it’s probably a bit better. But the CPL is a growing league and it will get to that level very quickly.”
Volesky, whose decorated NCAA Division 1 career included the Ohio Valley Conference player of the year and three-time all-conference selection while with the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Cougars, has joined a Wanderers front line that includes leading scorer Massimo Ferrin and young striker Tiago Coimbra, who together combined for 12 goals last season.
After missing the playoffs for a second straight season, the Wanderers rebounded in 2023 in Gheisar’s maiden season and finished in a tie for second and hosted a playoff match for the first time in club history.
Volesky said Gheisar proved to be the perfect pitchman in convincing him to join the Wanderers.
“Patrice gave me a really long presentation about the team, the success last year, the fan base,” Volesky said. “His playing style was probably the No. 1 selling feature and fitting into that playing style is what I like.
“It’s been a welcoming environment,” he continued. “The team is really good. As far as talent goes, we have more, or at least the same, as the rest of the league. It’s just a matter of us coming together and the implementation of our playing style.
“We haven’t shown it yet in the first couple games but once we get the ball rolling and we start playing we want to play, it will come to fruition.”
The Wanderers, who started the 2024 season on the road in British Columbia, returned home with an 0-2 record after losing their season opener 1-0 to Pacific FC on April 13 and 2-0 to Vancouver five days later.
They play their home opener Saturday afternoon (3 p.m.) against Atletico Ottawa in front of what should be a packed and raucous Wanderers Grounds crowd. The Wanderers won nine home matches in 2023, second-best in the league.
“This weekend at home is a good opportunity to show what we can do,” Volesky said. “I thought we played pretty well against Pacific, especially in the second half. For 70 minutes of that game, we were the better team. But then Vancouver, we didn’t play particularly well.
“We had spent a whole month on the road so I think the guys were feeling pretty tired. At the same time, there’s no excuses.
“I’m glad we’re home now and I’m looking forward to getting my first taste of playing at the Wanderers Grounds.”
