Juniors from Hereford and Worcester and Shropshire, together with two adults, have recently returned from a tennis holiday with a difference and memories for a lifetime, after spending 10 days as guests of Club Unicourt, Kharkov State University, in the Ukraine.

   The invitation came from the President of the Sports Club, Vladimir Temchenko, who invited us to stay with families and attend their Tennis Centre for High Class Sportsmen. We had no idea what to expect and with a great deal from Moor Park School in Ludlow, who initiated the invitation and acted as interpreters, we succeeded in obtaining visas only days before departure - and we were off.
Kharkov is a town the size of Birmingham 500 miles south of Moscow and is the largest University town in the Ukraine. The Ukraine itself has a population the size of England. Our first impression as we stepped out of the train was a sea of smiling faces. The families, coaches and pupils of the Club had all come to meet us and that warmth of welcome was to continue for the 10 days of our stay.

   The town itself was mostly destroyed in the 2nd World War and therefore very little of the old town is still in existance. The buildings are post war and despite rather monotonous blocks of flats, there are large areas of silver birch forests in the town, wide streets busy with cars and trolley buses, but no traffic jams, gracious squares with awesome statues, a beautifully clean modern Metro and a huge University complex.

   The Tennis Club is part of the University Sports Club which caters for 25 different sports. Valery Burko, the driving force behind the success of the tennis club, is an extraordinary man combining hard professionalism and tremendous energy and enthusiasm, with the ability to create a family atmosphere of love and loyalty from his coaches and pupils.

    He showed us his training and selection techniques which included a series of ball coordination tests which he has developed himself and combined use of eye, brain and hands. Once selected the children play 4 hours tennis a day, 2 hours in the morning before school and 2 hours in the afternoon - and weekends.
   
    He has 6 coaches all of whom deal with a particular age-group, all of whom either did or do play serious competitive tennis and all of whom support and encourage their pupils whether it is during training, watching their matches or taking them to play Tournaments.

    Our children joined his junior squad for the 10 days playing on their outside clay courts. After getting accustomed to the surface, their play improved considerably due to regular hard competitive play, physical training and coaching from their young 'handsome' coaches. It gave us a good insight into why USSR are producing such a talented crop of tennis players.

    They had just completed building a huge double storeyed carpeted indoor tennis centre of which they were very proud, and we were very honoured to be there for the opening when Dima Poliakov, their star pupil, who just lost to Pat Cash in 5 sets at Wimbledon this year, played a demonstration match for us. He lives in Kharkov and is trained in the Club by Valery Burko which is a great incentive and role model for the junior members of the club. He regularly plays against the coaches and other young up and coming players so that the standard there is always improving.

    They held their Junior National Championships in Kharkov this year and next year we are invited to send some juniors to take part in their international tournament in June where a team from Israel, West Germany and France are invited.

    Many more exchanges are planned and we hope to welcome them into our homes next year and hopefully give them as wonderful a time as we experienced. Times are hard for them now and may get worse. We were prepared for the shortages of food and clothes in the shops, we expected their professionalism in Sport but we had not expected to find wonderful, generous, kindred spirits and when it was time to wave goodbye at the station, laden with presents and flowers, it felt as if we were leaving very dear close friends, and I don't think there was a dry eye in the house.

Jenny Ellerton.

...magazine "Matchball Tennis"(November, 1998, Moscow)...

Tennis club as a house of creation
Ukraine, Kharkiv, "Unicourt"

University tennis complex "Unicourt" located in the very centre of Kharkiv near the largest square in Europe - Svoboda square - is the unique phenomenon. Not only for modern Ukraine but perhaps also for the whole CIS. "Unicourt" is not only 14 open courts and 4-storey Tennis Palace with 6 sheltered courts. It is also the training gym with medical centre. But the special proud of sports complex owners is the club building where club's guests and members can always have a rest, taste the dishes of home cooking, see the history of world, all-union and Kharkiv tennis, participate in disputes on historical, literature and music subjects. In one word, it is the house of creation which gives the possibilty of communication not only with the favourite game, but also with art, music and literature.

   Magazine's reporter met with the founder of "Unicourt" and its today's director - well-known tennis specialist, master of sports Valeriy Burko. Pedant, dictator-democrate - how only people may call this man here. Many people love him candidly, others are rather afraid of him. But all people acknowledge the leader in him. His respect Burko deserved by selfless activity on tennis developement in the city, keeping its traditions - Kharkiv was one of the tennis pioneers in Ukraine, where many well-known players including the champions of USSR Olga Kalmykova and Yelizaveta Chuvyrina began their glorious way to the sport tops...

   "I came to these courts in 1969 when entering the University, - says Valeriy Burko, - This educational institution takes the special place not only in the history of Ukarine. It's ehough to say that Kharkiv state university is 34 years older than Kiev university and after its opening (in 1805) it was at the head of huge educational region of the South of the Russian empire for many years. The founder of the university Vasiliy Nazarovich Karazin dreamt to make the second Ozford from it. And only 7 thousand citizens lived in Kharkiv then...
But this is by the way... While a student I was already a tennis player, the member of junior combined team of USSR. And generally I'm quintuple champion of Ukraine in singles and doubles, played with the champion of USSR Michail Moser in doubles (by the way he is the brother of well-known fottball player of 60s Ivan Moser). I'm also the participant of 25 international tournaments, four Sports and athletics meetings of the peoples of USSR. From 1961 to 1967 I played for the combined team of Ukraine. I finished my tennis player career in 1969, began to work as a coach. For six month I trained children in school gym.

   University sports complex accounted only two open courts, two basketball and three volleyball grounds and football pitch that time. Two summer courts weren't enough for us. We began to "annex" the territory for tennis from sports complex step by step. For the first time we re-equipped basketball ground into tennis courts, then it was volleyball ground and then the football pitch. Thus, tennis stadium gradually arose. By 1980 it already accounted 14 summer courts with different surfaces (sand, bricks crumbs, asphalt). But this was only the first stage of club creating.

   The problem of all-the-year-round trainings became critical. In 1982 we started to the project of the gym. It was semi-legal way! The reason was that after Moscow Olympic Games there existed the prohibition for using budget means for such purposes. So, the works were carried by the methods of people's building. Parents, enthusiasts helped us. And in eight years the first line of the tennis complex was put into operation and thus the club became the owner of two hectares of land - and this was the very centre of Kharkiv!

   The next stage of our building was the erection of stands for audience on the central court. Now we have full-fledged, classical tennis stadium which allows official international competitions to be held. Generally, today "Unicourt" is the property of the university. What does it mean? It means that mass character is guaranteed for tennis. There are five faculties in the university. On each faculty tennis is compulsory subject with credits. Instead of common physical training lessons. Totally over 1200 men attend trainings on our courts. The categories of people are:
500 - children groups, their fee is 60 grivnas ($30) a month for 12 hours of training. Is it expensive? I don't think so.
500 - students, trainings for them are free of charge.
200 - veterans, 30 of them traing free, too.

   Besifes, we also have the group of Olympic reserve consisting of 20-30 talented children. Today our best pupil, 15-years-old Tanya Perebeynos (coach Sergey Sitkovskiy) is the strongest in Ukraine (under 18), took part in junior Wimbledon '98.
Rent is the first. The second are sponsors, we find them among parents, among people interested in advertisement. I cannot but underline the fact that the great help is recieved from Dmitriy Polyakov, the member of National team of Ukraine in Davis Cup. He helps us in our work with sponsors and in directing children toward high purposes, at last his name makes certain contribution into club's image. By the way, in my time training Polyakov, I stood before the complicated choice: Dima or club? I couldn't be everywhere at once, I should do only one thing. I'd chosen the second and still have the soreness before Dima. By his talent Polyakov yielded only to Medvedev and Kafelnikov. But he needed hard coaches hand like Kafelnikov by his character. But I'll repeat I'd chosen the club...

   Now "Unicourt" is the second house for us. There are few actual members of it - only some 30 men. The president of the club is legendary volleyball player, twice repeated Olympic champion Yuriy Michaylovich Poyarkov, with whom we work more than five years. Here are some activists of the club: professor of the university Eugeniy Michaylovich Vorobyov, assistant professor Valeriy Grigoryevich Pikalov and more, and more...
And not only by tennis we live here, for we are united by common interests - from sport passions to literature. Every Friday we conduct poetry evenings. From Shakespear, Karamzin, Kluchevskiy to Pushkin, Shevchenko, Brodskiy and Vysotskiy. I have a special attitude to the person of Vysotskiy. We celebrated his 50th anniversary this January very warmly.

   Dozens of art workers not only from Ukraine but also from Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities were the guests of the club. For example, we recieved Anatoliy Romashin and Nikolay Karachentsov known with their passion for tennis not so long ago. Violinists and pianists, church music choir, people's artist of Ukraine Konstantin Shasha, creative family of the Muratovs made their concerts in the club.

   This year we arranged and even sponsored the coming of our country-woman from Chicago, wonderful bard-singer Katya Kapelnikova. During two weeks we conducted four recitals, listened to her remarkable poetry, songs and then issued her author's collection for the club's means...

   So lives this amazing tennis club "Unicourt". We wish there would be more such clubs not only in Ukraine but also in other countries of our CIS. Then there would be no worry for the tennis destiny in the exUSSR territory.

Zairbek Mansurov

...magazine "Matchball Tennis"(November, 1998, Moscow)...

Kharkiv: Maria Chernitskaya Memorial