Growing youth ultimate during war: Interview with Orysia Vachko

Editors: Valeria Strelchyna, Dmytro Babych
Translation: Sofiia Kaliuzhna, Hanna Gavrylova

Lynx is a school ultimate club that was founded three years ago in Lviv. For almost two of these years, the children have been training in war conditions. Despite the difficult times, the club is developing and growing, and in December 2023, Lynx participated in their first official tournament — Ukraine Indoor Ultimate Championship (UIUC) in Kyiv in the open division.

The development of the flying disc sport and the rise of a new generation of athletes in Ukraine during the war is possible thanks to the dedication and enthusiasm of community members like Orysia Vachko.

A volunteer, coach, and the "godmother" of school ultimate in Lviv, Orysia shared her experience in an interview with UFDF.

* The material contains fragments of interviews with Orysia in the spring and December 2023.

About Forming the Lynx Team

Actually, the decision to organize a team (Editor's note: the school ultimate team Lynx) was spontaneous, although I had already been familiar with ultimate for almost 2 years. We organized the team along with a graduate from my school — Oleh Kozdryn, a player of the NXT team. At the graduation, after the 11th grade, I said: 'Oleh, let's organize. We have so many children who are interested, but there is no place to practice. It's too early for them to join the adults, but to keep their interest in ultimate, they need to be organized.' So it began [smiles] — we grouped our little ones in 2020. We count September 15, 2020, as the official date of the team's founding. Currently, Lynx is just over 3 years old.

We have children in two age groups. The first group is our 'little ones', as I call them, these are kids from 2nd to 4th grade. As far as I know, children so young do not practice anywhere in Ukraine. I am amazed at how they, so small, can even hold the disc and throw it accurately. So now they are gaining skills and training three times a week.

The second group comprises the more senior teams, we already have 3 of them (these are children from 6th to 9th grades): we have the first and second lineup of the boy's team, and a separate girls' team. Each team has up to 14 children.

We primarily divided children not by age but by their skills. That is, the children who can master this sport more easily and quickly went to a stronger team. Those who were slower to do it went to a slightly weaker one, and there they acquired skills so as not to be afraid of the disc. When the disc 'flies' towards them for the first or second time and they fail to catch it, a bit of fear arises. We work to 'dull' this fear, so the children learn where the disc may come from and how to confidently catch it.

Currently, all the children practice in one large group, because it's a bit difficult to find a free sports hall in Lviv. Additionally, the stronger team goes to train with adult players from NXT — where Vlad Stefan plays. The children participate in the School League in Lviv and recently made their debut at the Ukraine Indoor Ultimate Championship in the open division. I am very proud of them and satisfied with the results they show!

About the preparation and participation in the Ukraine Indoor Ultimate Championship 2023

The children have been participating in the School League in Lviv for a long time, played with the adult boys from NXT, took part in camps [UpGrade Camp, organized by Denys Zharkov]. So at the suggestion of Roman Derkach [player of the NXT team], we decided that it was time to participate in 'serious competitions'. We were deliberating between the Polish Igloo and the UIUC, but agreed to start with Kyiv.

The selection principle for the camps has always been consistent — first come, first served. The first to register were the ones to join the team. I deliberately make it possible for everyone to participate, and it is transparent to the children. For the UIUC, we primarily focused on the main boys' team. So, our team consisted of 12 boys and 1 girl — players. Another girl went as a fan. Well, Oleh and I — as coaches.

Organizationally, going to another place with children is no longer very difficult. We have already been on other trips. Parents trust me, although not all of them have even seen me outside of the Telegram chat [laughs]. We always look for housing nearby and so that all the children are in one place. The key requirement is to have a mat and sleeping bag with you in case of air raid alarms and the need to be in shelter: to be able to sit or lie down comfortably and not get cold. Everyone should already be prepared for this.

We can say that we started preparing in advance. We had 3 game training sessions, to which we cautiously added physical training exercises. And also practiced separately with an athletics coach (we had a total of 8 sessions) — we wanted to work on vertical jumps and starting speed. You know, the kids ran mostly at the same speed, but in ultimate, sprinting is important. Later we added one more training session in a large hall so that the kids could better orient themselves in space. Because our standard training sessions take place in a school gym, we play 3x3 or 4x4, but here we had to prepare to play in a larger space. And additionally, some guys went to practice with NXT.

The children were literally living for this preparation. We even had jokes within the team, like: "There will be no such thing at the UIUC!" – referring to passes or certain game moments. It became a "catchphrase".

Of course, children were afraid to play against adults and understood that it would be more difficult. I specifically calculated the average age of our team to be 13.7 years! [laughs] But everything was just wonderful! We felt support from everyone! There was a moment with the Gigolo team when they won the disc flip but gave us the attack. The children were very impressed that teams could act in such a manner.

Oleh and I also understood that there would be losses, but we really wanted to ensure that it wasn't a loss by a shutout — that our team would knock down discs and score points in each game. In the game against the girls, we even led by a few points! I'm sure that if Slavik, our very skilled player, could have participated with us (he was at the qualifiers for floorball on those dates, unfortunately) – we would have scored even more points.

But victory is not the main thing. I'm having some sort of re-evaluation. I want them to develop. You see, this tournament was an opportunity for them to get better, because you play against a stronger opponent! And the children opened up at the competition in a different way, I can see it…

The impressions after the tournament are very positive and vivid! The children didn't complain about fatigue or anything else at all. I even ordered a sauna for them the morning after the train to relax their muscles. Everyone then went to catch up on sleep, but some even rushed to practice in the evening! It is very inspiring when their eyes are so lit up when they are so passionate about this sport! It makes me want to do even more for them and to give more!

About the importance of the community and the School League in Lviv

Overall, since the beginning of the war, the importance of this time together, communication, has been felt even more. Children find their friends here because the main requirement in our team is healthy communication, so that there are no instances of bullying or miscommunication. First and foremost, we emphasize that we maintain healthy communication within the team and that there must be respect for the opponent as well as for one another, as this is the nature of the sport. Outside of training, our children gather, walk together, they even throw the disc when there is snow outside. They wrote in the group: 'I'm going out with the disc,' and immediately other children gather, joining such walks.

I am very glad that despite the war, we continued to train and participate in School Leagues. On February 24th, I woke up to a call from one of the moms of my class (I am a class teacher): "Orysia Myronivna, did you hear that the war has started?". We evacuated our children and, together with my husband, immediately joined the volunteer headquarters of Olga Teslyak in Lviv, a volunteer who has been supporting soldiers on the front line since 2014.

But later we resumed our training for the children. Actually, parents started asking because children wanted some positive emotions. We resumed training in the summer of 2022 on the grass. There was a school nearby where we could take shelter in case of an air raid alarm. And I thought that in principle, not many children would come because many were taken abroad. But nevertheless, we consistently had a group of at least 15 children at the training sessions. Our training usually lasted an hour and a half before the war. But the children asked to be together more and more. They wanted communication, they wanted live communication, not just to be at home. Therefore, the grass did not limit us in rental time and we spent as much time as possible with the children.

Now [winter 2023-2024], the training sessions take place in the sports hall and more often – three times a week, in total about 15 hours a week. If an air alarm catches us, we go down to the shelter. With the older ones we can even continue some physical activity there, and with the little ones – we wait it out, distract them. Then the parents come to pick them up.

[Editor’s note: At the time of publication of the interview, the club’s training is suspended. After a Russian missile hit a nearby school, access to the sports hall was temporarily restricted.]

It would all be hard to imagine without the support of the guys from NXT, who say "these are our kids too." And together with Oleh, we are raising two future coaches — Ihor (9th grade) and Danylo (10th grade), first lineup players of Lynx, who train the youngest group in our presence. Ihor and Danylo also practice with NXT to gain experience. And of course, in order to allow them to train younger children, we went through pre-medical training and bleeding control courses together with them.

About Vlad Stefan

Honestly, on the same day when Vlad came and said that he had passed the selection for the 'Markus' unit, it was hard for me to accept this information. For some reason, I imagined myself in his mother's place at that moment... But he is an adult. He made a decision, his decision must be reckoned with.

When I announced this information to the children, we decided to give him a flag with our signatures. He didn't expect that. The children spent a long time thinking about what to write. It's perceived very differently when you don't know someone personally — after all, many men and women are fighting there on the frontlines. But when you are directly acquainted with the person… When they are very close to you, contributed a lot to the team's development…

The children took the news that Vlad was going to serve very, very emotionally. And probably after that, the tradition of signing the flag emerged. During the war, two of our players also went abroad. One girl went to England, another girl — to Denmark. And somehow, when you realize that a child writes to you: ‘You know, at every stop where we drove along the road, I stepped out with the flag on my shoulders', it really tugs at your heartstrings.

The children send photographs showing that, after moving, they keep this flag in a prominent place in their room, hung up alongside photographs of the team. [Cries and wipes away tears] Forgive me, it's hard to talk about such moments.

We have a father of a girl from the younger group. Our Solya is only 9 years old, 3rd grade. Her father is an artilleryman. Sometimes at training, I make videos or photos to actually send to her father so that he can see how his child is growing. It seems, there is not a single indifferent Ukrainian who is neutral about the war.

It's very hard to realize how much this war has affected — both the children and us adults. I am usually, you know, one of those strong women who can do everything and always, but the war has made me too emotional. Every time you ponder what life would be like if this hadn't occurred, you also consider the extensive efforts required to prevent it from happening again in the future. We want our children to live in a free country, to have free access to sports, to education, to be able to communicate with each other not only through the phone screen. So everything that depends on us, we do here on the spot.

We want to do everything so that these teenagers who train with us, these children who train every day, won't have to be confronted with war — with the need to protect their country, to protect their home. We really want this war to end as soon as possible — of course, with our victory. And for our young generations to have the opportunity to develop our country, because after the war everything will have to be rebuilt.

We must hold on. For the sake of the future. Everything will be ok, it must be.