MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – As soon as Yelena Leuchanka got off the airplane in Kiev and took in her first deep breath she knew she was home.

	Yelena Leuchanka is planning to make the most of her journey halfway around the world. (All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks)

And with each subsequent breath it became apparent to her that she didn’t want to stay. At home in bed she couldn’t sleep and once again developed those terrible headaches she always had as a child. Home for Yelena is Gomel, Belarus, a short drive from Kiev and an even shorter drive to Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986.

Yelena was just two years old when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s reactor number four exploded at 1:23 in the morning of April 25, blowing off the reactor’s heavy steel concrete lid and omitting 190 tons of highly radioactive uranium into the atmosphere in a fire that burned for 10 days.

Thirty people died instantly and within 20 miles more than 135,000 people were forced to evacuate, leaving everything they owned behind. Most of the fallout drifted into the Gomel region of Belarus where Yelana’s family lives. She says her father Stepan was among those who helped evacuate the towns and villages closest to the disaster. Today, she admits her family and a great many other families living in the region are not well.

“My dad had a couple of surgeries on his leg and it has come to the point where he cannot walk,” she says.

Gomel (spelled Homyel on most maps), is located in the southern portion of Belarus close to the Ukrainian border. Belarus is situated between Russia and Poland and to the south of Lithuania.

Gomel’s origin dates back to the 12th century and is one of the oldest towns in modern day Belarus. In the mid-19th century Gomel served as a direct route between St. Petersburg and Kiev and was part of the telegraph line between St. Petersburg and Sevastopol. When the tsarist government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in 1917, Belarus became part of the territories that made up the Soviet Union.

And when the Germans occupied Belarus during World War II, more than 2.2 million people were estimated to have died along with the destruction of more than 200 cities and 9,000 villages. Gomel, a city today with about 500,000 residents and the second largest in Belarus to Minsk, had a large Jewish population before the war. Most of them went to German concentration camps.

“There are no buildings in Belarus that are older than 50 years old,” said West Virginia University director of basketball operations Aukse Harris, a native of nearby Lithuania.

The Gomel region had never really recovered from the German occupation when Chernobyl dealt the economy a crushing blow.

According to a web site dedicated to the Chernobyl disaster, more than 70 percent of the radiation fell on the people of Belarus. They were exposed to radiation 90 times greater than that released in the bombs dropped on either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. A United Nations report in 1995 estimated that about nine million people were directly affected by the disaster and of those, three to four million were children.

It is believed that the full medical impact of the disaster won’t be known until about 2016. It’s not hard to understand why Yelena wanted to leave.

Yelena Leuchanka’s first love was playing the piano and after five years of schooling she received her diploma. Her family was athletic in nature: her 6-foot-4 father played volleyball and the others often used to ice skate on a nearby lake in the winter time.

“Our family grew up doing sports but nothing serious,” she admitted.

But it wasn’t until she hit a big growth spurt when she was about 10 that someone brought up the idea of her trying basketball.

“I was the tallest girl in the school,” she remembered. “I had a physical education teacher and he had a friend who was coaching basketball. He was like, ‘Yelena, you’re pretty tall. Would you like me to take you and you can try it?’ I was like, ‘No.’”

Finally his persistence won out and she decided to give basketball a try. She treated the sport casually until hitting another big growth spurt and reaching 6-foot-3. “After that I didn’t miss any practices and I just picked it up naturally,” she said.

Basketball eliminated the awkwardness of being so much taller than her friends, “When I played basketball people respected me and wanted me to be on their team,” she said.

Her mother Ludmila was reluctant to let her play but her father said to let her do what she enjoys doing. Yelena was soon discovered playing for a city team in Gomel and was invited to attend the Olympic School in Minsk. It was a development school for the country’s top players and served as a feeder system for the Belarus Junior National Team.

Just 14 at the time, Yelena was torn between her family and the thought of pursuing a better life. “It was four hours away from Gomel and I had always been close to my mother,” she remembered.

She decided to go.

“The first week I called home every single day and I cried,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Mom, I want to come home.’ But I said, ‘Let me stick it out one more week and if it doesn’t get better I’ll come home.’

“I really respect them for letting me go,” she added. “They said, ‘Yelena, you can always come back home. The door is always open.’”

The schedule at Olympic High School was strict. She got up every morning at 7 am and after breakfast, went to basketball practice from 9 to 11 am. Then it was off to school from 11:30 am to 4 pm before having another practice from 4:30 to 6 pm. At 7 o’clock she ate dinner and then did her studies before going to bed and repeating the process again the following day.

She admits the structure really helped her become a much better basketball player. “I wanted to do whatever it took and that always helped me go on.”

Leuchanka made the Junior National Team and played in the European Cadette Championships.

By the time Yelena was 16 she was 6-foot-5 and was entertaining offers from professional teams all over Europe. “I had a choice to play professionally in Spain,” she said. “I could have stayed in Russia and played or pretty much gone anywhere in Europe and made decent money.”

But she was also interested in the United States, having traveled there once as a member of the Belarus junior team and becoming better acquainted with the country through movies and music.

“I didn’t like listening to Russian music; I always liked listening to American music even though I didn’t know what the words meant,” she said.

In the meantime, Aukse Harris was working at Virginia Commonwealth as an assistant coach after coming to the United States to play at Abilene Christian in Texas. She was hired by VCU with the sole purpose of using her European connections to try and land good players. The practice of recruiting Europeans at VCU dated back to Susan Walvius in the early 1990s; Walvius later spent two seasons at West Virginia University before moving on to South Carolina.

Harris discovered Leuchanka in the summer of 1999 at the European Cadette Championships in Romania and knew right away that she was good enough to play for any college team in the United States.

“She was doing these spin moves and things that none of the other players could do,” remembered Harris. “She was 6-5 and guarding the other team’s point guard at mid-court. It was just ridiculous.”

Of course there was a big catch: Harris had to convince Yelena to leave her family and go halfway around the world to play basketball. And before she even got to that, she first had to deal with Yelena’s club coach.

In Europe a lot of the club coaches were looking to make a fast buck, and having a player of Leuchanka’s ability could make a coach and a club team as much as $10,000, possibly even more with a player as young as Yelena was. Letting an American college coach talk to his best player was about the worst thing a club coach could do because he wasn’t going to get anything in return.

But Leuchanka was lucky. Her Cadette coach had a family who traveled with the team to tournaments and he fully understood Yelena’s desperate situation in Belarus. He gave Harris Leuchanka’s telephone number and told her to remember him the next time she came looking for players. It was an extremely compassionate gesture. According to Leuchanka, Harris spent about a year calling her before she was finally ready to leave.

“(Aukse) started sending me letters and kept asking me if I would like to come to the United States,” said Leuchanka. “Eventually she said she needed an answer and I finally said yes.”

Harris certainly felt pressured to land a good European player. But she also ran into some resistance from another assistant coach on the VCU staff because he wasn’t that impressed with Yelena after watching one of her tapes. Harris’ trepidation soon turned into frustration.

“I wasn’t crazy,” she said. “Anyone could see that she was a terrific player so I was going to prove to them that I could get her here and show them that she was a great player.”

Having made the difficult transition herself, Harris knew Yelena wasn’t quite ready to go to a four-year college. She couldn’t speak English at all and was better off going to a junior college with a strong foreign curriculum. Harris placed Yelena at Seminole Junior College in Orlando, Fla.

Yelena Leuchanka Center 6-5, Junior Wabash Valley J.C. Gomel, Belarus
JC STATISTICS YR PPG RPG HONORS 2001 22.0 11.0 Kodak A-A 2002 18.1 12.8 Kodak A-A

It was at Seminole that Harris met assistant Cindy Martin, a first-year coach fresh out of the University of Florida whose first big duty at Seminole was to help Leuchanka become eligible for the following season. Seminole had fared well with foreign players (West Virginia University signed Seminole guard Darya Kudryavtseva a few years ago) in the past and was known as a powerhouse junior college program in Florida.

Martin literally got Yelena hooked on phonics, “She would sit in my office and I had a whole bunch of CDs that she liked. She would walk around singing songs having no idea what the words meant but it really helped her with her pronunciations,” Martin chuckled.

Martin also bought a Russian-English dictionary and the two of them went through it together.

“I had to translate food … hungry … bathroom; anything that would translate,” Martin said. “I remember the first time we went to Wal-Mart she was overwhelmed. She had never seen anything like that. She went around the fruit section alone for about two hours.”

“We don’t have stores like this,” says Yelena now in perfect English. “We don’t have things packed nice and so colorful. In my country if you want to buy milk or meat you go to one store. If you want bread you go to another store.”

Yelena spending time in the grocery store also brought back the difficult childhood memories of her waiting in line to get bread and milk for the family. “Sometimes when my turn came there would be nothing left,” she said.

Cindy Martin spent the entire 1999-2000 season serving as Yelena’s coach, mother, sister, friend and confidant.

“I wore a lot of hats,” Martin said. “Yelena and I grew very close because I didn’t have a lot of friends and family in Orlando.”

Soon Connecticut and Duke found out about Leuchanka and began calling the school inquiring about her availability, “Chris Dailey from Connecticut was interested in her and they usually don’t take foreign kids from junior college. And Duke never takes junior college kids,” Martin said.

After a year at Seminole, Martin was hired by new West Virginia University coach Mike Carey and was immediately assigned the task of maintaining ties with Leuchanka. Carey also added Harris to the WVU staff.

“I called up Coach and I asked him if he liked my resume,” said Harris. “If you don’t I’ll send you another one. He never asked for the second one.”

“When you tie Coach Harris back in, it was like a family connection for Yelena here at WVU,” said Martin.

“Yelena wasn’t the reason I hired them, but I certainly knew about her,” added Carey.

Leuchanka had a magnificent first season in junior college and finished the year averaging 22 points and 11 rebounds per game to earn Kodak first-team All-America honors. She was listed by All-Star Girl’s Report as the nation’s No. 1 junior college recruit.

Martin knew Leuchanka had another year of junior college before she could go to a four-year school and she was worried that another recruiter might slip into the picture.

“Our game plan was that Yelena was one of our top recruits and we had to work hard to make sure we got her here at West Virginia,” said Martin. “Even though I spent a year with her I was still worried.”

Leuchanka eased some of Martin’s concerns after the first year when she told her she wanted to transfer to a school closer to West Virginia. “That was a good sign,” said Martin.

The best fit for Yelena turned out to be Wabash Valley Junior College in Mt. Carmel, Ill. Subsequently, the Wabash Valley coaching staff brought Leuchanka to Morgantown for an unofficial visit in the summer prior to her sophomore season and she wound up verbally committing to the Mountaineers.

“That was a great relief but it was still scary because come September we were allowed to go to their campus and I remember a few schools showing up in stretch limos trying to go in and talk to her,” said Martin. “She had the presence of mind to tell them that she had committed to West Virginia and she didn’t want to talk to any other coaches.”

Leuchanka had another outstanding season in 2003, averaging more than 18 points and 12 rebounds per game and leading the Warriors to a 33-3 record and a No. 5 national ranking. The signing of Leuchanka and Pittsburgh freshman guard Meg Bulger gave West Virginia one of the top recruiting classes in the country that year.

Bulger was a terrific talent and a player who was going to make a big difference in West Virginia’s lineup, Mike Carey thought, but Yelena Leuchanka was 6-foot-5 with soft hands and an even softer shooting touch. You can spend a lot of years trying to find a player like that and he now had one in his program. She was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

“We’re very fortunate to have her in the program,” said Carey.

The coach can still remember seeing Yelena’s tape for the very first time. “There was no doubt about her,” he said. “Not only was she 6-5 but she had skills: she could run the floor and was very fundamentally sound. There was one sequence where she was guarding the other team’s point guard and there was another when she brought the ball up.”

	Gomel is just a short drive away from Chernobyl, Ukraine (Map courtesy of University of Texas at Austin).

West Virginia won 29 games Carey’s first two seasons in 2002 and 2003, nearly the number of games the Mountaineers won in a four-year period from 1997-2000.

With Leuchanka on campus, Carey’s rebuilding program had just taken about 10 steps forward, he thought. But as it turned out, Carey didn’t have Leuchanka for his third season because she injured her knee in preseason practice and was forced to have season-ending surgery.

“I was sick to my stomach when she went down,” said Carey. “Especially where our program is right now: we needed someone that could take us to another level I think she is the type of player that can do that.”

“I was very heartbroken,” said Martin. “I was very worried about Yelena bouncing back. She came here to play basketball and she wanted to go home. It was a very challenging time for her to really get through that. But she’s done well.”

Harris was probably the most distraught of the three: “I spent hours listening to her mother crying on the telephone and I was the person who told her that we would take care of her,” she said. “I didn’t want to let the family down.”

Yelena admits her injury was only the half of it. “The thing I was blessed with when I was in Florida was that there were some girls on the team from Europe, which made it so much easier. When I went to Illinois there was a girl from Yugoslavia and one from Latvia. When I got here in West Virginia there was nobody from overseas. I was here at a big school with nobody. That was tough.”

Leuchanka wound up having two surgeries on her knee to get it right.

“I had never been hurt like that before,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ve really recovered from that mentally.

“But I think I’ve become tougher,” she adds. “Maybe that is what I needed. Some people go from one thing to another trying to find what it is they like to do. I found what I like to do playing basketball and it makes me happy to play. I’m lucky.”

The junior hasn’t yet been cleared to play pickup games but has been lifting weights and getting her knee stronger. She will be tested at the end of this month to see if it is strong enough to begin playing again.

When she is completely healed Martin predicts Leuchanka will be as good as any post player in the country.

“She’s very rare; she’s very skilled for her size,” said Martin. “Most girls her size and strength just play on the low block. Yelena can step out to the elbow. She could be that team leader that we’ve been missing.”

Even though West Virginia did well without Leuchanka last season, winning 21 games and going to the NCAA tournament for the first time in 12 years, Mountaineer fans close to the program know the season could have been even better with Leuchanka in the lineup.

“I don’t know how many times we all sat around after the game saying, ‘If we would have only had Yelena,’” remarked Harris.

“It makes me feel so much better when people talk about me and what we could have done with me on the team,” said Leuchanka. “It’s like I’m needed and people want me to be here. That has kind of helped me get over my injury.”

Once she’s cleared to begin playing again, Leuchanka has very big plans. She wants to get the Mountaineers back into the NCAA tournament and into the national rankings. She also has goals of becoming an All-American and being a first-round draft pick.

Folks who don’t know a whole lot about West Virginia’s program are going to be in for a big surprise when they see Yelena Leuchanka walk out onto the floor.

“Schools know about her but they really don’t know what she can bring to the table,” said Martin. “Yelena got so much more skilled during that year at Wabash. Her maturity dealing with her first year has helped her drive and her passion.”

That drive includes making a career of basketball.

“When I graduate I want to play at least 10 more years of basketball,” she said. “My goal is to make the WNBA. I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’m not going back to Belarus.”

Yelena admits she has already become ‘Americanized.’ When you talk to her it’s hard to believe that she’s only been in the country for a couple of years; she speaks that well. She is close to earning her degree in international studies with an emphasis on international business. Even if she never plays a single minute of college basketball, owning a college degree already puts her well ahead of the game.

“This just says a lot about her character and she’s so mature -- she had to be,” said Carey. “To leave that situation and come over here without speaking any English and to go through what she’s gone through … that just says a lot about her.”

Living in America has given her a perspective she could have never conceived had she remained in Belarus. “I’ve seen the other side and that’s why I appreciate this so much,” she says.

Like the rest of us who take it for granted, she can enjoy the ordinary everyday comfort of getting a good night’s sleep or breathing clean air, of not having to worry about how to live on $100 a month.

Gomel, Belarus, is a beautiful place that was unfortunately poisoned by progress. Its economy has been devastated beyond repair -- probably for our lifetime.

But Yelena plans to return to her home one more time. And when she leaves for good, she’s taking her family with her.



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