“I call them to ask if they are alive,” Katarina Zavatska opens up on her family’s struggles in war raged Ukraine ahead of the BJK Cup
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Katarina Zavatska
Ukraine’s invasion by Russia have left a lot of tennis players in shock. It is something that they cannot control but thoughts of their family’s well-being have haunted the players on tour. The war is in its seventh week now and Ukrainian tennis star Katarina Zavatska has come to terms with the guilt she felt earlier of playing tennis while her family lived in continuous fear and danger. However, she has now come to terms with it as she highlights how she s the sole earning member of her family right now.
“What I can do is to play tournaments to earn money, to send it to my family to help them because nobody has a job right now in my family,” Zavatska said on Tuesday. “Everybody is just home. They have nothing to do to earn.”
Zavatska along with her compatriots, Dayana Yastremska, and Lyudmyla and Nadiia Kichenok form the Ukraine tennis team and this weekend in Asheville, North Carolina as they go up against third seed United States in the qualifiers of the Billie Jean King Cup. The tournament was earlier called Fed Cup and it is the female version of the Davis Cup.
Zavatska highlights how every day she is calling her family ad asks them if they are safe or not. The worry of losing near and dear ones is engulfing her. She shares how it is very much the reality in Ukraine right now. “Every day I’m calling to my parents, my family, to ask them if they’re alive,” Zavatska added. “It seems like very tough, rude. But it’s true. This is the reality right now.”
Just like Katarina Zavatska, Olga Savchuk’s family is also in dire straits back in Ukraine
The story is similar for Ukraine’s captain Olga Savchuk as he shares how her family is living underground in a bomb shelter as the war continues without any rest. “It’s like we live in two different realities,” Savchuk said. “Here we are, of course, we have to continue to support our families. (But) sometimes just like having food, I’m thinking about my grandpa and aunt who are in a bomb shelter now. How I can even have a cup of tea right now? My family is, like, underground. I have goosebumps when I even talk about it.”
Savchuk highlights how staying away from them feels very wrong but this is the new reality as they check on their families every now and then. “You wake up, the first thing you do is check to see if your family is okay, and check the news,” Savchuk said. “We do that basically non-stop,” Savchuk added.
The American players and team captain Kathy Rinaldi said that they are doing everything in their power to make the Ukrainians comfortable. The teams have also planned a dinner together.
Meanwhile, 10% of the ticket revenue for the weekend is being donated to the Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund by Global Giving through the “Tennis Players for Peace” initiative. Billie Jean King, who will attend Friday’s matches, and her partner Ilana Kloss are also donating $50,000 to the Ukraine Relief, and other local sponsors in Asheville are also making donations.
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Atrayo Bhattacharya
(193 Articles Published)