Looking at the iconic “Patriotic Paddle” known across the Ukrainian pickleball community, veteran Oleksandr Dehtiar stopped at one line: “Борітеся – поборете!” Fight and you shall overcome. Written by Ukraine’s national poet Taras Shevchenko, it was meant as a call to courage. But Oleksandr couldn’t hold the paddle. The war had taken his right arm and left hand.
“Let me help you,” said his teammate, Mykola Zarytskyi. Both were from Sumy but had never played together. Mykola was the kind of athlete you’d see on a poster, a Ukrainian champion in athletics before the war. Now he walks on a prosthesis and stays active in adaptive sports. In 2023, he went to the Invictus Games in Germany, won two gold medals and two silver, and carried the Ukrainian flag at the opening ceremony.
A couple of friends came over with a big roll of elastic bandage. Mykola wrapped several tight rounds around Oleksandr’s left forearm, set the Freedom Fighter paddle against the stump, and went around another dozen times until it wouldn’t slip.
“Here we go,” Mykola said.
This was the First Ukrainian Veterans Pickleball Championship, held March 31 to April 5, 2026, in Kyiv. It was organized by the Ukrainian Pickleball Federation (UPF) and the Ministry of Veterans Affairs of Ukraine. 104 veterans from 20 regions came. They played a new sport, competed in four categories, felt supported, and, in a drafty gym that smelled of floor polish and wet coats, found a new community.
This pickleball tournament might have been one of the fairest in the world. Almost every player gripped the same paddle with national colors. The blue and yellow palette stands for sky and wheat fields — eternal symbols of peace and perseverance in Ukraine. At its heart sits the Leleka (white stork, a national emblem of hope and return) flying like the Tryzub (Ukraine’s golden trident). The design symbolizes stubborn endurance, sovereignty and pride. Together, this symbol and Shevchenko’s verse make a paddle that speaks of hard-earned, never-surrendered freedom.
The Freedom Fighter is a USA Pickleball approved paddle that came from San Diego.
“We’ve been UPF’s first American partner since June 2025. Volodymyr and Anna are close friends, and we co-designed this paddle with Ukrainian artists Dasha Volkova and Andrii Voloshyn based in the Netherlands. It was an international team effort,” said Angus Wong, founder of Anywhere Pickleball, a Californian from Hong Kong.
“We know how valuable and vulnerable freedom is.”
Founded in 2024, the UPF has worked under conditions most sports administrators will never know. A small network of athletes, coaches, and volunteers began introducing pickleball in schools, gyms, and rehabilitation centers, borrowing paddles and taping off courts wherever they could find a spare hour of floor time. What started as improvised sessions in echoing school halls slowly turned into a national effort that kept growing.
UPF’s work has emphasized participation over spectacle. A lot of that falls on Anna Glotova, UPF’s co-founder and Director of Strategic Partnerships.
Anna stepped away from the safety of her serene life in New Zealand and returned to her hometown, Kyiv, answering a calling that became her life’s work. Her title means emails at odd hours, calls across time zones, grant applications written on laptops in cold airport lounges, and patient explanations to anyone who might help: This is not just a sport for us; this is part of how we rebuild people.
“Pickleball is one of many ways to support those who have sustained life-altering injuries on their path to a dignified, full life,” she says. “Together, we believe in the power of sport to inspire, heal, and connect people across borders.” On paper, it sounds like brochure language. In a Kyiv gym full of amputees chasing a plastic ball under her banner, it sounds like a job description, and a promise.
Despite the war, UPF keeps expanding the sport across Ukraine — in schools, gyms, and rehabilitation centers, and in competitions that didn’t exist two years ago. In March 2025, UPF led Ukraine to become the 60th member of the Global Pickleball Federation. UPF has already represented Ukraine internationally, including at the English Open and the Pickleball World Cup in Florida. While much of the world saw Ukraine only in headlines, UPF volunteers were dragging scuffed duffel bags through airports to make sure the flag was present at player check-in.
Developing pickleball during wartime is not a retreat from the world. It is proof that Ukraine is still here, still moving, still competing.
Back to the tournament, the veterans, the coaches, the volunteers were all in on a small pickleball that suddenly meant more than any speech. You could hear it in the sound: the sharp pop of the paddle, the squeak of wheels and rubber soles, somebody yelling “Out!” too late and everybody laughing anyway.
These were people who knew the weight of body armor and hospital sheets, and here they were arguing about a line call. A guy with a scar where his sleeve ends wants a rematch. A woman who learned the game last month is telling a referee he missed a kitchen fault. Nobody’s talking about rehab schedules. Nobody’s checking a phone for bad news. They’re checking the score.
You couldn’t see the pain from the bleachers. You could hear the cheering, the kind that starts small and grows because one good rally deserves another. For a little while, the risk and the memories stayed outside with the winter coats. Inside, it was just the game, and the simple, stubborn joy of still being able to play it.
Mykola brought the miles: experience, pace, and the steady voice that doesn’t leave when the score gets tight. Oleksandr brought the stare: focus, resilience, and total commitment in every rally. They looked whole. They looked strong. They ran down balls in the corners, drove, returned, dinked, and suddenly sped it up when they had to, leaving nothing on the floor but sweat.
They won bronze.
Then UPF called them back to the stage for something else. A special award — Fantastic Team. They handed each of them a Freedom Fighter paddle: the Leleka, the Tryzub, Shevchenko’s verse. Oleksandr’s mother, Tetiana, stood between them. She thanked the organizers with tears in her eyes, the good kind when a mother watches her child find his way back.
Only real freedom fighters deserve this paddle. It was a quiet, solid way of saying: you have already won.
This is the new culture of sport in Ukraine. About people. About strength. About partnership. About pulling each other back onto the court when the world has tried to keep you off it.
And on a small, taped-off rectangle in a Kyiv gym, pickleball turned out to be exactly what the country needed it to be: a sport for all.
Read the inspiring stories of Oleksandr and Mykola
The Ukrainian Pickleball Federation (UPF) is the 60th member of the Global Pickleball Federation, representing Ukraine in international pickleball. (pickleballukraine.net)
Anywhere Pickleball is a San Diego-based pickleball company and the official strategic partner of the UPF. (anywherepickleball.com)
Photo: (c) Sergiy Kadulin, 2026
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