She woke up to 'We’re at war' in Ukraine. Now Mariia Vainshtein is a New York City tennis champion

NEW YORK (AP) — Mariia Vainshtein never heard the noise and slept straight through that horrible night four years ago.

She didn’t have her phone near bed when she woke the next morning — it probably had been taken by her parents for some teenager's misbehavior, she suspects now with a laugh – so couldn’t scroll around for the news of the day. Instead, she just asked her mother when she could get a ride to school.

Anzhelika Kotliantseva knew they weren’t going anywhere in Ukraine that day. Not after she had been awake for hours, listening to the nearby explosions that began when Russia launched its invasion.

“My mom was like, ’What do you mean? We’re at war! There’s no school, no nothing!'" Vainshtein said.

Within days, a dream of someday going to the U.S. for an education was rushed into reality, one she wasn't 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.

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.

“I’m very proud of her. Very proud,” Kotliantseva said. “I’m so excited that she’s going to college, and she’s gone so far in this short time.”

For Vainshtein, tennis has always been about personal growth

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.

Vainshtein's home city of Odesa produced professional women's tennis players Elina Svitolina, who reached this year's 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.

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.

She tried out and was accepted into the 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.

“We talk to them, ‘OK, what happened here? How did you handle this? How can you handle it better next time?’ and I think that’s something that sometimes gets overlooked,” Cizek said. “But to me it’s 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.”

Vainshtein and her family had already dealt with that.

They packed for months. They've been away for years

Odesa is a port city on the Black Sea and was an early target of Russia's 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't be safe in Ukraine, Kotliantseva brought her two daughters to New York, where the parents and sister of her husband and Mariia's father, Oleksandr, live. Only he couldn't join them, because men were forbidden from leaving Ukraine.

“It was terrible. In three days we decided to move, me and my two daughters, and my husband left in Ukraine, and we didn’t know if we’d see him again and when we’d see him again,” said Kotliantseva, who like many initially thought the war would be short.

“We took our clothes for two months,” she said.

They see Oleksandr, who has remained in the family's 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's parents have viewed Ukraine as too dangerous to let her return since they left.

Vainshtein hoped to come to the U.S. for college, which would have meant this year — 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.

“I did it for my kids and now I’m OK. I adapted. It was difficult,” Kotliantseva said.

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't do much good when it came to speaking and understanding — especially in New York, where they do it quickly.

She would plead with teachers not to call on her in class so she wouldn't be laughed at, asking if just turning in all her assignments would be good enough.

“Really what people did, they said, ‘You have to learn English. Go back to your country and learn English,’” Vainshtein said. “Like, what do you mean go back? My country is at war, so I can’t go back.”

‘I’m going to play no matter what'

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.

So confident, in fact, that even though James Madison fell short in its hopes of a repeat tennis title in Vainshtein's senior year, she's eyeing another championship. She's on the school's team that finished second in the state in the “We the People” competition, where students have to demonstrate their knowledge of the Constitution and law through simulated congressional hearings, and they're headed to the nationals this spring.

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.

She's applied to some Ivy League colleges, and isn't 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.

“It’s not like if I go to a school where I can’t be on a team, it’s not like I’m going to end playing tennis,” Vainshtein said. “I’m going to play no matter what.”

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