THUNDER BAY — When Molly Carlson was diving in Thunder Bay as a teenager, her biggest worry was getting to the Canada Games Complex on time for practice.
For Ukrainian divers Stephan Movchan, Nelli Chukanivskaya (the first ever junior high diving world champion), Vladislav Balkin and Vyshivanov Dmitry, it was the constant worry that their homes wouldn’t be standing or their family would be killed by a Russian missile attack.
The foursome, who range in age from 12 to 17, were whisked out of the war zone earlier this year and resettled in Croatia, but are now on Canadian soil and looking for billets in Thunder Bay willing to open up their homes and house the young athletes through August — the end of the diving season.
Mitch Geller, who coached at the Thunder Bay Dive Club for seven years, is the technical director at Dive Canada, and joined Carlson at city hall on Monday to make a plea to the community to help the Ukrainian divers out, through Project Genesis.
“It’s a close-knit community and in the diving world, we all know each other, so everybody has been very concerned for our friends in Ukraine. We thought we would try to do something, and do something meaningful. We sent out an invitation to the Ukrainian diving organization, and we let them know that what we would try to do is if any of their athletes were wanting to potentially come to Canada to find safe haven and continue to have some sort of a normal life and continue to pursue the sport, that this is what we can do,” Geller said.
“We would look for willing hosts and homes, sort of an adopt-a-diver concept, in cities that have diving programs.”
Geller said Dive Canada is looking for three or four homes to house the athletes, knowing the Games Complex is open for training, with their coach, Oleg Vyshivanov, also accompanying the athletes, while helping the local diving club establish a new junior high diving program.
Carlson said she’s trained with many of the divers and said they’d be model guests should they find a billet to open their doors and welcome them into their home.
“They are so passionate. There is nothing more than these athletes would rather do than to high dive and to see how inspired they are to be in a community that supports their goals is inspiring for us,” said Carlson, a former junior Pan-American Games champion who returned to Thunder Bay this week, along with her boyfriend and fellow Red Bull Cliff Diving Series silver medallist, Aidan Heslop.
It’s win-win for the club and the local diving community too, she added.
“To see this club be rebuilt, with some passion I just think would be an inspiration to us and to the whole community. So, if there are people out there willing to support the next generation of not only the club … and these youngsters, to help them out with not only their dreams, but to be in a safe place, that would mean the world to me.”
Anyone interested in more information is asked to email Andy Ritchie, an assistant coach with the Thunderbolts swim club, at [email protected].
