By Pickleball Ukraine
Oleksandr Dehtiar grew up in Verkhnya Syrovatka, a village near Sumy. He graduated from university, found work as a press operator at a factory, and spent his weekends the way many men in that part of the world do: lifting kettlebells, playing table tennis when the mood took him, and fishing when it did not.
He did not have grand plans. He was simply living his life.
In 2022, his country needed him, so he went.
He spent two years serving in eastern Ukraine. In the summer of 2024, he was severely wounded. He lay in a coma for three weeks, first in Dnipro and then in Kyiv, before doctors evacuated him west. At the Unbroken rehabilitation centre, he had to learn how to speak again.
Then he had to learn how to walk.
The war had taken his right arm and his left hand.
His mother, Tetiana, never left his side.
Ten months after his injury, Oleksandr entered a table tennis competition in the upper-limb amputee category. He finished second. Using an elastic bandage to secure the paddle, he adapted to a new reality. It was the same adaptation he would later bring to pickleball.
Mykola Zarytskyi came from Bilopillia, also in the Sumy region. He studied mechanical engineering, served in the border guard service, and trained in athletics from a young age. Before the war, he became a Ukrainian champion.
After the full-scale invasion began, Mykola served on some of the most difficult stretches of the front line, including Lysychansk, Bakhmut, and the Kherson region. He was severely wounded.
What followed was the long process of rebuilding.
In 2023, he travelled to Germany to represent Ukraine at the Invictus Games. He won gold medals in shot put and rowing endurance, silver medals in discus and rowing sprint, and carried the Ukrainian flag at the opening ceremony.
He returned home with four medals and something far harder to measure: the understanding that sport could help give a person back their life.
The two men knew of each other. Both were from Sumy. Both were veterans. Both were amputees navigating the same difficult road.
But they had never truly crossed paths until they registered for the First Ukrainian Veterans Pickleball Championship in the spring of 2026.
They decided to compete together almost immediately.
There had been no months of preparation. No carefully planned training programme. Just two men from the same region who understood each other without needing much explanation.
Mykola’s years in competitive athletics gave him an instinctive understanding of what his new teammate needed.
From the first session, he worked on Oleksandr’s confidence. Quietly. Methodically. The way good teammates do when they are not trying to prove anything.
He helped him read the game. Helped him find his positions on court. Helped him believe the next point was winnable.
The technical guidance was there.
The tactical thinking was there.
Mostly, it was trust.
Not a coach and a student.
One man helping another.
One played without hands.
The other played on a prosthetic leg.
Together they found a rhythm.
They chased balls into the corners, dinked, drove, and left nothing on the court but sweat.
They won bronze.
Then the Ukrainian Pickleball Federation called them back to the stage for something else.
A special award: Fantastic Team.
Each received a Freedom Fighter paddle, decorated with the Leleka, the Tryzub, and the words of Taras Shevchenko.
It was a quiet way of acknowledging what everyone in the gym already knew.
On the final day of the championship, a woman came looking for the organisers.
Her name was Tetiana.
She was Oleksandr’s mother.
She had been there through everything. Through the coma. Through the hospitals. Through the months of learning how to speak and walk again.
She had told him, over and over, that he could still do anything.
Now she wanted to thank someone for the competition.
For what it had given her son.
“He is so motivated now,” she said. “He wants to train. He wants to participate. He wants to live actively again.”
She said it with tears in her eyes.
The good kind.
The kind a mother cries when she sees her child finding his way back.
Oleksandr still fishes.
He returned to it after losing both hands.
He plans to keep playing pickleball.
He hopes to have bionic prosthetics one day, to drive a car independently, and to see more of the world.
But he also carries one dream shared by millions of Ukrainians.
For the war to end.
And for everyone to come home.
