Ukrainian UCO tennis player shapes the future of sports in her country

Ukrainian UCO tennis player Karyna Yurchenko has been supporting her country from abroad, organizing official tennis tournaments in Ukraine that help players get recruited by colleges.

Yurchenko co-works with Universal Tennis Rating (UTR), the global tennis player rating system, and her former coach to give Ukrainian players the opportunity to play tennis and become officially rated without having to travel to other countries.

“I’m trying to present not only UCO on the tennis court but also my country,” said Yurchenko. “I feel proud that I can do something from here to help people back home, and with tennis tournaments, keep being the new generation of people who develop tennis and sports in general in our country.”

When she was two-years-old, Yurchenko moved to Saint Petersburg, Russia, but moved back to Ukraine in 2014 when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Yurchenko said her family could not stay in a country that attacked their home. Yurchenko lived in Irpin, 20 minutes from Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, when Russia invaded again in 2022.

“It’s probably my worst nightmare that I’ve ever had,” said Yurchenko. “We just woke up in the morning and we started to get messages that school was canceled, everything is canceled because Russia invaded Ukraine.”

Yurchenko said that the Russians invaded from the Belarus border, which the Ukranians did not expect, and that her city experienced bombing from the first day. 

“During the night it was hard because we could hear explosions every five minutes,” said Yurchenko. “The next morning we read the news that the tanks were 30 minutes away from our house, so my parents told me and my siblings, ‘pack everything, what you need, the most important things, and we’re leaving’”.

Yurchenko said they packed into their Toyota Prius and left to the west of Ukraine, with her dad driving, her two little siblings, mom, and grandpa in the backseat, while she had her dog between her legs and held her cat in her hands.

“A week later, our town was occupied and for that moment it was one of the cities with the most victims,” said Yurchenko. “Dead bodies would just be on the ground and it was very intense, very intense actions. A lot of people, they were tortured in basements and it was so hard to see this on the news.”

Yurchenko and her family decided to try to cross the border, going to the Cheque Republic first and then Germany a couple of months later.

While she was in Germany, a tennis club near Munich provided Yurchenko with as many free practices as she wanted, which she said she was very grateful for and was a great preparation for the United States.

Most of Yurchenko’s friends and her grandparents still live in Ukraine, and she went back last summer to see them, even though the war is still ongoing. She said it was upsetting to see how getting bombed almost daily affects the mentality and perception of Ukrainian people still trying to live their normal lives.

“I was on the bus, and then I look to the left side and there was a park. People are having fun, they’re laughing, you know, eating ice cream, and then I turn my head to the right and I see that almost every single building is damaged somehow because of the bombing and it’s still not fixed,” said Yurchenko. “So this contrast is definitely very hard emotionally to accept.”

With the war still continuing, Yurchenko said it’s how it was when it started, with most cities being bombed daily, every demographic being killed, and Ukraine in need of aid from other countries. 

“It’s not only about Putin, because I feel like a lot of people think that only Putin is in charge of the war, but Putin doesn’t kill people himself, there are hundreds, thousands of soldiers who kill civilians with their hands,” said Yurchenko. “When I was in Ukraine this summer one of the children’s hospitals was bombed and it got destroyed.”

Yurchenko said she tries to help by donating money to the military and people in need while also organizing the tennis tournaments and paying monthly for the tournament license. She said she learned many logistics processes, how to order balls, design trophies, and find people willing to compete, now doing it remotely and having her ex-coach do the physical help in Ukraine.

Yurchenko said that her hard work, discipline, and passion come from her country’s mentality, always working their hardest in everything they do, and the values she has learned from playing tennis for 15 years.

Now a junior at UCO, Yurchenko said she is trying to use every opportunity she can since her visa restricts her. She is majoring in Marketing and Professional Selling, is a part of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and an Oklahoma City Thunder College Ambassador. After graduating, Yurchenko said she wants to continue to impact tennis in Ukraine.

“Hopefully, I can keep developing these tennis tournaments that I’m organizing right now. And it will be nice to build the platform for players that will allow them to find different promotions or sponsors that will help them to build their careers,” said Yurchenko. “I don’t know if I want to go back to Ukraine physically. It’s my very big inner conflict because I like my experience here, but I also love being home.”