Dylan Bettencourt
Debris is scattered across the stadium. The stands have been destroyed. The field is littered with craters.
Yet the young boys of the Olymp Irpin football club are playing and training as if nothing had changed since Russian forces invaded their country.
A football at their feet brings smiles to the faces of the children, in peacetime or during war.
Everywhere they look, there is a reminder of the war that has plagued Ukraine since the invasion began on 24 February.
Shrapnel is seen across the football pitch and shell fragments are bunched together in a pile next to where the boys place their kit bags.
Two of the boys’ fathers have been killed during the war, but still the players show up for the start of their football season.
The season remaining in full operation is a sign of great resilience and offers everyone involved the much needed distraction.
“We play football even in these circumstances because it helps our morale, and we try not to think about the war,” said the team’s coach, Daniil Kisel, per The New York Times.
The 25-year-old said when training resumed on 2 April, days after Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, was recaptured from Russian troops, he began working to clean and repair the stadium himself.
However when the training sessions resumed, only three players turned up – the club previously had 400 players.
Kisel said most of the players had fled, mostly to Poland. But as time went on, some families returned, and soon there were about 100 boys in training.
On a recent day, outside the stadium poked with bullet holes, local residents turned up to receive humanitarian aid from a German group.
But inside the stadium, a full football team of boys dodged the craters on the pitch in preparation for the start of the season, without any worry about what was happening outside.
Image source: @TheNewYorkTimes
