SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — When the final horn sounded in The Big West Quarterfinal on April 25, it brought Christina Mullane's UC Santa Barbara Water Polo career, and with it a 12-year love affair with the sport, to an end. The Playa Del Rey native, having grown into one of the Gauchos' best players, went out with a bang, scoring three goals and assisting three more in an overtime win on her Senior Day and putting up one last hat trick in the quarterfinal match as well, a two-week stretch that would have made for quite the swan song. But no. Mullane decided she had more singing to do, more love to give her sport.
 
"I'm not ready to give up water polo yet," Mullane says. "There hasn't been a time where I haven't had water polo, and so when I was done, when Santa Barbara was like, 'okay, last game,' that couldn't be it."
 
At that was not it. Thanks to her own efforts both in and out of the pool, Mullane will continue playing water polo, heading to Greece in the fall to begin playing professionally in one of Europe's water polo hotbeds. There, she will join NO Rethymno, a club based on the island of Crete, for year 13 of her water polo journey.
 
The sport has been part of Mullane's life since she was 10 years old, when her parents would drive her an hour and a half from school to practice in Huntington Beach and, later, Pasadena. Those days of doing homework and eating dinner in the car on the way to and from water polo are fond memories for Mullane, whose whole family has the sport in their blood. Not only does her younger sister, Alyssa, also play Division I water polo, having just finished up her sophomore season at Marist, but their dad played in high school and was the one who suggested that Christina give the sport a shot when her passion for swimming waned.
 
"I tried it out and I loved it," Mullane says. "I really enjoy the competitiveness, and I also like the team aspect of it. I like the idea of team camaraderie and having your teammates with you and playing for something more than just yourself. And I'm a very competitive person, so I use it as an outlet."
 
Twelve years on, that passion has not faded one bit. Mullane's love for the game is a trait that UC Santa Barbara Head Coach Emma Myall adored throughout the two years she coached Mullane.
 
"She just loves the game, and that makes it that much easier to coach her," Myall says. "She's so funny. She gets so excited about things, just as I do. I remember we were writing up this play for our last game and it was meant for her. It was an underwater play and she's like, 'I could do it, let's do it, I'm gonna do it' … getting really psyched up for it."
 
But when it came time for Mullane to find her next opportunity, she did not need much coaching at all.
 
"Through the whole chaos of this season, Tina did a great job of figuring out herself, to be honest," Myall says. "She did a great job at researching, talking to the right people. I know Clara (Vulpisi, former Gaucho assistant coach) gave her some connections and then she kind of figured it out."
 
In fact, a pro career had been in the works since before Mullane's senior season even kicked off. In the fall of 2024, a team in Spain reached out, which Mullane says was the first real indication that playing professionally after graduation was a tangible possibility. She chased the opportunity, going so far as visiting Spain and training with the team. When she realized that it was not going to be the best fit for her, she kept looking for a team that would be. With help from Vulpisi and Marist Head Coach Chris Vidale, Mullane got more coaches reaching out to her, eventually connecting with NO Rethymno.
 
"The team is trying to recruit more international players to compete against the higher-level Greek teams," Mullane explains. "Rethymno is not number one by any means, so (the team) is trying to recruit girls who are really willing to dedicate themselves to water polo and work really hard to get them to be a team that competes against the number one team, Olympiacos, and develop a team that's willing to put in the work and everything. That really stood out to me."
 
And it will take work to compete with Olympiacos, who are three-time European Aquatics Women's Champions League winners and three-time runners up, as Rethymno finished last in Greece's A1 League last season. Also in the league are two-time Women's Champions League winners and three-time runners up Vouliagmeni and two-time Women's Champions League winners and two-time runners up Glyfada. Not that high-level competition scares Mullane. In fact, it is part of the reason she transferred to UC Santa Barbara from Hawai'i.
 
"Coming to Santa Barbara, it was amazing," she says. "I got the opportunity to actually play in high-level games."
 
"I transferred to Santa Barbara and I felt like I grew into a player I always thought I could be, gained experience, got to be in the pool playing against these high-level teams."
 
And when it comes to high-level games, it doesn't get much higher than Greek water polo. The country's seven Women's Champions League winners are third-most in Europe, and Greek clubs have appeared in more Women's Champions League finals than any other country on the continent. At the Olympics, both the Greek men's and women's national teams have finished as high as silver medalists. It should come as no surprise, then, that water polo is more ingrained in Greek culture.
 
"People watch it on TV and like you watch people playing basketball outside (in the U.S.), you see people playing water polo outside, in the ocean or at pools outside in Europe," Myall explains. "So, it is a much more exciting thing because you're seen more and people are like, 'oh, you're that water polo player from the team,' they recognize you, which is cool."
 
Of course, Mullane's move to Europe is already recognition in and of itself, a reward for her hard work and growth at UC Santa Barbara, two years that saw her blossom into one of the Gauchos' top attackers. She was Santa Barbara's third-highest points scorer in 2024, her first season with the team, tallying 26 goals and 27 assists. In her first big game for the Gauchos, against No. 4 Stanford, she lit up the Cardinal for two goals and three assists. She was even better in 2025, tallying 33 goals and 23 assists to once again finish third on the team in total points. And nobody had a better finish to the season than Mullane, who scored three or more goals in five of the Gauchos' final seven matches.
 
"Tina has grit, the Gaucho grit, which I love," Myall says. "She really started to shine because she's the type of person who needed to find that confidence within herself and she did this year."
 
"She also is a determined player where she has, I feel like, peaked in a way here, but also still hasn't reached her potential of the best player she can be. I think she's going to go off there, she's going to do so well and she's going to learn so much."
 
Mullane will officially start her professional career when the 2025-26 A1 League season kicks off in October. For her coach, it will be an incredibly proud moment, as Mullane is set to become Myall's first pupil to play professionally.
 
"Having coached Christina for the last two years, it's like your little kid growing up, it's really cool to see her do fun things and things that are going to bring her success," Myall says. "It's very cool because it's not just someone I coached, but it's someone who's a Gaucho going over. We are trying to build a program here, and with Christina being over there talking about her experience here, hopefully it brings over girls who are young there and want that (college) experience."
 
As for Mullane, October will bring not just an extension of her water polo career but an elevation of it, a chance to fall further in love with her sport.
 
"I'm excited for everything, meeting new people, being in a totally new place," Mullane says. "It's Greece, that's amazing, but also playing high-level water polo in Europe is totally different than high-level water polo in the U.S. It's faster paced, it's more aggressive, it's a totally different system, and so I'm really excited to learn about that and just keep playing water polo. It's a sport that we all love, and I'm just excited for it all."