LOS ANGELES (NewsNation Now) — Student-athletes Yuliia Zhytelna and Ekaterina Repina didn’t seem to be such a unique paring just a week ago. However, things have changed drastically for these two tennis doubles partners at California State University-Northridge after Russia launched a devastating attack on Ukraine last Thursday.
“I tell her everything,” Zhytelna said. “Every time … I feel I need to … she understands what’s going on … she was, like, ‘We almost have, like, the same situation.’”
Zhytelna is Ukrainian and Repina is Russian. They both found support from each other while being roommates, making their bond stronger than ever.
“It’s a crazy thing … to be there for each other,” Repina explained. “That’s all we can do because we cannot change that much as of right now. Especially us being so far away from both of our families.”
The duo was playing in a tournament last week when Zhytelna heard about the Russian invasion. Her entire family lives in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. The city has endured seven long days of attacks from Russian forces, with the fighting intensifying in Kyiv and other big cities. Zhytelna said she keeps the city’s emergency alert notifications up on her phone at all times.
“Every time … when I seeing this message from officials in Kyiv, saying ‘danger, go to the bomb shelters’, my heart is just, like, stopping,” Zhytelna said. ”Because every time you see this message, I think it could be happening with my family.”
While tennis and school are offering diversion to Zhytelna and Repina, the partners are worried less about the NCAA standings.
Their coach, CSU Northridge tennis coach Gary Victor, says he understands.
“Their minds are clearly not on tennis and they’re both high-level students, 3.8, 3.9 students. So for them, it’s hard in so many different ways.”
He continued: “If these two young ladies can get along beautifully, wouldn’t it be nice for those countries to get along and for us all to get along?”
Repina said she has never had a problem admitting to being Russian.
“No, not at all,” Repina said. “We never separate each other by countries, we just here by best friends, as humans, nothing politics.”
