By Avery Martin
Contributor
For any freshman athlete, adjusting to the collegiate environment is a challenge. Setting a personal best in an event is even more so. But doing that while family and friends remain in a war-torn nation? That is a challenge only Uliana Pokutnia is facing.
The freshman left her hometown of Kremenchuk in central Ukraine in her junior year of high school. She picked up track only after enrolling in an American high school. Now, in her first college season, she was named the NE10 Rookie of the Week on April 8.
“We just started. We only had one meet this outdoor season, and I had a nice PR. That’s the only event I did so far in outdoor season,” Pokutnia said.
Pokutnia, who teammates call a “hard worker,” currently sits atop the NE10 rankings in triple jump. She finished second at the UConn Dog Fight meet on April 4 with a final jump of 11.49m. That is not only a personal best, but it was the best DII women’s triple jump result at that meet. She is ranked 39th in the national DII standings as of April 11.
Those results are especially impressive given Pokutnia’s background. Having started the sport much more recently than some of her peers, she has had to learn everything about it while adjusting to living a continent away from home.
“I did dance in Ukraine, but when I came here, they had certain sports in high school and I thought I might as well pick something,” Pokutnia said. “I started jumping my senior year of high school because I was trying out different events and seeing how it is. I was kind of started for fun, but then I started to really like it and kept doing it.”
Pokutnia initially wanted to study abroad temporarily before the war, but when Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, her parents sent her to Connecticut to escape the fighting. Her hometown has come under mass missile attacks since she left.
She says her new love of track keeps her busy and distracts her from the news.
“Track a little bit distracts me from everything that’s going on. At least to stay busy and to not read the news the whole day,” Pokutnia said. “So I really like that about track and in general, it’s fun to do track here and send my results to my family and my friends. They support me so much. So it’s nice for them to also see me do well here.”
Pokutnia has used this motivation to inspire her to work hard on the track. Coach John Wallin works with the jumpers on the team and says her attitude stands out amongst the athletes.
“She’s very sharp, it’s really refreshing. She’s very intentional with a lot of things that she does, as opposed to just going through the motions and I think that is why she has improved so much. She really takes it to heart. If she does it wrong, she wants to do it right,” Wallin said.
Mackenzie Glenn competed alongside Pokutnia as a teammate last semester. Now, she is working on the coaching side. She has also seen the hard-working attitude that makes Pokutnia stand out.
“As an athlete, I think I was able to see her personality more. I was able to get to know her as just a friend. She’s really funny, she has such a great personality where anyone can be friends with her. But now moving into more of a coaching role, I’ve noticed how coachable she is and how hard working she is,” Glenn said.
Being able to use constructive criticism from her coaches to better herself is a skill that Pokutnia uses well, Glenn said.
“She takes it to heart in the sense where she understands where the constructive criticism is coming from. She knows that it’s not coming from a bad place,” Glenn said. “She internalizes the mistakes and the criticism that she’s getting and instead, she puts it towards progressing and getting better.”
Pokutnia herself is relatively humble about her results and attributes it to the environment she is in. She believes the coaching and expectations at the collegiate level have held her accountable to perform at her best.
“I would say I’m just part of this environment where everyone is trying to improve and get better. I’m just trying to be like them,” Pokutnia said. “I’m surrounded with all these amazing people, and I’m just trying to be a part of that and keep working.”
Pokutnia and her teammates are back in action on the track on April 18 at the UConn Northeast Challenge and on April 19 at Yale’s Mark Young Invitational.
