nearby explosions that began when Russia launched its invasion<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cMy mom was like, \u2019What do you mean? We\u2019re at war! There\u2019s no school, no nothing!\u2019\u201d Vainshtein said.<\/p>\n
Within days, a dream of someday going to the U.S. for an education was rushed into reality, one she wasn\u2019t ready for. No command of English, no father with her to help console her on the days she returned from school upset after kids picked on her for the way she talked.<\/p>\n
Those difficult early days are past. Now 17, Vainshtein is a New York City high school tennis champion who may keep playing when she heads to college in the fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very proud of her. Very proud,\u201d Kotliantseva said. \u201cI\u2019m so excited that she\u2019s going to college, and she\u2019s gone so far in this short time.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Vainshtein, tennis has always been about personal growth<\/p>\n
Vainshtein helped James Madison High School in Brooklyn win the Public Schools Athletic League championship in 2024, its first title since 1978. She also won the individual competition, and last summer added the trophy for her division in the Mayor Dinkins Cup, a tournament for New York City players from both public and private schools. <\/p>\n
Vainshtein\u2019s home city of Odesa produced professional women\u2019s tennis players Elina Svitolina, who reached this year\u2019s Australian Open semifinals, and Dayana Yastremska. Her father also played when he was younger. But her introduction to the sport at age 5 was for medical reasons as much as physical.<\/p>\n
She struggled focusing her eyes when she was younger, and a doctor recommended getting her into a sport where she would have to follow a ball. Vainshtein played in junior tournaments in Ukraine, and her tennis went to another level when she began training at the Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning in the Bronx.<\/p>\n
She tried out and was accepted into the New York Junior Tennis & Learning\u2019s free scholar athlete program for grades 3-12, where the tennis instruction is mixed with life skills education. When Rob Cizek began working with Vainshtein, he could tell she was an aggressive player who liked to win points with her power, but sometimes rushed too much. Cizek, who studied sports psychology while he was a college player, makes mental focus an aspect of his coaching, and it paid off for her on and off the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talk to them, \u2018OK, what happened here? How did you handle this? How can you handle it better next time?\u2019 and I think that\u2019s something that sometimes gets overlooked,\u201d Cizek said. \u201cBut to me it\u2019s a really important part of their growth, both off the court but also later when they face adversity, tough situations and they have some tools to handle that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vainshtein and her family had already dealt with that.<\/p>\n
They packed for months. They\u2019ve been away for years<\/p>\n
Odesa is a port city on the Black Sea and was an early target of Russia\u2019s attacks, with explosions heard before dawn on Feb. 24, 2022. Her family first rushed to a bomb shelter, then fled to nearby Moldova. Deciding it still wouldn\u2019t be safe in Ukraine, Kotliantseva brought her two daughters to New York, where the parents and sister of her husband and Mariia\u2019s father, Oleksandr, live. Only he couldn\u2019t join them, because men were forbidden from leaving Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was terrible. In three days we decided to move, me and my two daughters, and my husband left in Ukraine, and we didn\u2019t know if we\u2019d see him again and when we\u2019d see him again,\u201d said Kotliantseva, who like many initially thought the war would be short.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took our clothes for two months,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
They see Oleksandr, who has remained in the family\u2019s home in Odesa, a couple of times a year now, and he has been able to watch his daughter play. They meet either in the U.S. or another country, as Vainshtein\u2019s parents have viewed Ukraine as too dangerous to let her return since they left. <\/p>\n
Vainshtein hoped to come to the U.S. for college, which would have meant this year \u2014 school in Ukraine runs through what would be 11th grade in American high schools. But her mother would still be home with her husband if not for the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did it for my kids and now I\u2019m OK. I adapted. It was difficult,\u201d Kotliantseva said.<\/p>\n
And it was especially so for her daughter, then in eighth grade. While students in Ukraine are required to study English, Vainshtein explained that was more writing and grammar. It didn\u2019t do much good when it came to speaking and understanding \u2014 especially in New York, where they do it quickly.<\/p>\n
She would plead with teachers not to call on her in class so she wouldn\u2019t be laughed at, asking if just turning in all her assignments would be good enough. <\/p>\n
\u201cReally what people did, they said, \u2018You have to learn English. Go back to your country and learn English,\u2019\u201d Vainshtein said. \u201cLike, what do you mean go back? My country is at war, so I can\u2019t go back.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m going to play no matter what\u2019<\/p>\n
A turning point came when one of her teachers denied her request to use translation help. That pushed Vainshtein to improve her speaking, to the point where she finally became confident to present in class.<\/p>\n
So confident, in fact, that even though James Madison fell short in its hopes of a repeat tennis title in Vainshtein\u2019s senior year, she\u2019s eyeing another championship. She\u2019s on the school\u2019s team that finished second in the state in the \u201cWe the People\u201d competition, where students have to demonstrate their knowledge of the Constitution and law through simulated congressional hearings, and they\u2019re headed to the nationals this spring.<\/p>\n
Preparation for that has put tournament tennis on a bit of a hold, though Vainshtein still makes the hour-plus commute from Brooklyn to the Bronx every weekend for her lengthy practice day. Soon, she may have to decide what role the sport that helped her adjustment to a new country will occupy. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s applied to some Ivy League colleges, and isn\u2019t sure about playing if she attended one of them. But she likely could at the lower Division I to top Division III schools that could also be considered.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like if I go to a school where I can\u2019t be on a team, it\u2019s not like I\u2019m going to end playing tennis,\u201d Vainshtein said. \u201cI\u2019m going to play no matter what.\u201d <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP Sports: https:\/\/apnews.com\/sports<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Mariia Vainshtein never heard the noise and slept straight through that horrible night four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[23276,108318,42962,793,7093,118083,2005,1999,223602,223603,232,99,428,1208,965],"class_list":{"0":"post-486285","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-colleges-and-universities","9":"tag-dayana-yastremska","10":"tag-elina-svitolina","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-james-madison","13":"tag-james-madison-dukes","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-odesa","17":"tag-rob-cizek","18":"tag-schools","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-tennis","21":"tag-ukraine","22":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}