Ukrainian XC Family Lands in Bend—Of All Places

 

Anhelina Hryhorenko is a typical 14-year-old girl in many ways—she loves art and isn’t a fan of math. And she’s excited to have her freshman year of school over.

But she’s got a lot of unique qualities, too. For one, she’s a junior national champion with more medals than she can hold in two hands. She’s also the daughter of a former national cross-country ski team member team and the niece of a three-time Olympian.

She lives and trains in Bend, Oregon, and races in a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian national team suit. Since she’s only been in the U.S. since December, she speaks little English, but she’s gotten very savvy with Google Translate. She has also made friends with classmates and teammates on the Mt. Bachelor Sports Education Foundation (MBSEF) nordic ski team.

Anhelina, known by her teammates and coach as “Angelina,” is a quiet teenager most excited about training this summer. She moved to Bend with her family in February, thanks to a family who offered to host them and Mila Shelehoff, a fellow Ukrainian who’s been living in the U.S. for the last 30 years. Shelehoff has been serving as the translator and local liaison for the Hryhorenko family, which includes Anhelina, her mother, Yuliia, her father, Oleksandr, and her 10-year-old brother, Ivan.

An art and outdoor educator, nonprofit founder, and instructor at the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Center, Shelehoff created Bend For Ukraine. This community initiative supports displaced Ukrainian families by helping them resettle in Central Oregon. She’s known as “Mamma Mila” and has assisted the Hryhorenkos since they relocated to Bend. She’s also helped several other Ukrainians in Bend as they navigate the challenges of housing, employment, education, and cultural integration.

The Hryhorenkos met Shelehoff a few months ago, and they’ve already become fast friends. Ivan is the same age as her son, Lukian, and the two go to school and ski together with MBSEF.

“I moved to Bend about for the same reason they moved to Bend,” Shelehoff said of moving to the area two years ago. She and her son were drawn to the downhill skiing at Mt. Bachelor, which has the longest natural ski season in the U.S., with snow lasting into June. They ultimately switched to nordic and never looked back.

The Hryhorenkos had a different “coming to Bend” story. When they arrived in the U.S. in December 2023, they knew nothing about Mt. Bachelor or Bend. They initially landed in Salem, Ore., about 2 ½ hours northwest of Bend, to stay with friends who sponsored their humanitarian parole from Ukraine through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Uniting for Ukraine program.

They came seeking refuge in a foreign country, uncertain about their future. Anhelina brought her ski boots and little else.

Life Before

About two and a half years ago, Anhelina was training at a Ukrainian boarding school and racking up medals as a promising young cross-country skier. Her family lived in Central Ukraine, about an hour south of Kyiv, while Anhelina lived at a private academy and trained for skiing. She was chasing a dream and had the genetics to back it up—her father, Oleksandr, raced on the Ukrainian national team, and her aunt, Kateryna Gryhorenko, was a three-time Olympic cross-country skier.

On Feb. 24, 2022, everything changed. Russia invaded Ukraine, and Anhelina’s school evacuated its student-athletes to Poland. Meanwhile, her father, mother, and brother sheltered inside their home’s root cellar for two weeks while their country was under siege.

When they felt safe to leave, Yuliia fled to Poland with Ivan. They spent three months with Anhelina in Poland before returning to Ukraine and Oleksandr, a carpenter by trade. Kyiv had installed anti-missile systems while they were away, and their region wasn’t under occupation, so they felt it was safe to go home.

But life was far from ordinary. Anhelina returned to boarding school, but her family slept in their cellar and lived in constant fear.

“It creates a lot of anxiety, especially when you hear the explosions,” Yulia told the Bend Bulletin. “The bunkers are truly root cellars. They’re not bulletproof; they’re not bomb-proof.”

They continued to live this way until October 2022, when Anhelina survived a massive air raid while commuting to school. With that, the Hryhorenkos resolved to leave.

It took the Hryhorenkos a year and a half and several attempts to gain approval to enter the U.S. Eventually, with the help of their sponsors in Salem, their third application was accepted, and they landed in Oregon in December 2023.

Once in Salem, Oleksandr started working to support his family. Yuliia, a former physical education teacher, reached out to ski clubs across the U.S., hoping they could find a place for Anhelina.

“After arriving in America, we immediately started looking for a club for Angelina,” Yuliia explained in an email to FasterSkier. “She had to continue to practice so that there were no gaps in training. Salem could only give us running training, and we needed [ski] training. There was even a question about ending our career if we didn’t find anything, [after] almost 8 years of training.”

Despite not speaking English, Yuliia sent about ten inquiries. One responded.

“At first, when the email came through, I thought it was spam,” MBSEF Nordic Program Director Reitler Hodgert told FasterSkier.  “But as soon as I opened it, it made a lot of sense for us to offer them a space to land and do what we could to support that.”

Knowing very little about MBSEF—one of the premier nordic ski clubs in the country—the Hryhorenkos signed her up. By mid-January, she began training with the team in Bend. Their Salem friends assisted with transportation, lending a vehicle with winter tires so the Hryhorenko family could drive to Bend each weekend for Anhelina’s training. On Monday mornings, they’d drive three hours back to Salem in time for school.

After witnessing their long commute, Anhelina’s teammate, Maddie Carney, and her family invited Anhelina to stay with them on weekends. In early February, Sarah Max offered to host the family for free, and Yuliia and Ivan joined Anhelina in Bend while Oleksandr worked in Salem. The kids started school at Bend-La Pine and lived at Max’s home until late March.

They were also hosted by another nordic family, Dr. Sondra and Mike Marshall, who ultimately helped them find an apartment.

“They put a lot of effort into finding us housing among their acquaintances,” Yuliia wrote. “They are currently helping us pay for an apartment for a certain period of time. During our entire stay here, we are surrounded by fantastic people, whom it is rare to meet.”

Life After

United for Ukraine grants Ukrainian citizens and their immediate family members two years of temporary stay in the U.S. Through Shelehoff, who translated, Yuliia told FasterSkier that she was hopeful they could make the move permanent but uncertain whether that was possible.

“[I hope] my children can discover themselves here in this country versus in Ukraine,” Yuliia said. “They have many more opportunities to find themselves and do something they love in the future.”

In addition to other community members, Mt. Bachelor and MBSEF are sponsoring the Hryhorenko family so they can continue settling in Bend. Fischer and One Way have pledged to provide Anhelina with equipment for the coming season.

“When they first arrived in town, we had a huge outpouring of support,” Hodgert explained. “Mt. Bachelor reached out to support Anhelina’s family with trail fees and whatnot, and that was largely through [Mt. Bachelor Nordic Manager] Sydney [Powell] and was huge.

“… They moved here with basically just Anhelina’s ski boots, and so we had families giving gear, jackets, snow pants, gloves, hats…” continued Hodgert, a Bend native. “[That was] one of the proudest moments for me of our community here locally, just to see the number of people stepping forward to give what they could to get them on their feet here in town.”

One local bought Anhelina and Ivan new bikes.

“I’m in awe of how they were received and how much help they got,” Shelehoff said. 

Asked about Anhelina as a skier, Hodgert said that considering her age, she’s one of the most talented technical skiers he’s ever worked with.

“She has a very innate sense of body awareness, just like where each of her limbs are and how she’s moving them,” he noted. “Even while working through a language barrier … she picks up technical feedback and applies it to her skiing faster than any athlete I’ve worked with.

“She’s universally adored on our team,” Hodgert added. “Anhelina, as a person, is fairly quiet, so there were definitely some concerns that she’d feel … a little bit isolated around the team. And thus far, that hasn’t at all manifested. She has jumped right in with things.”

He laughed that his athletes “spend a significant time on Google Translate” while riding in the team van.

“Unsurprisingly, all of our athletes are super curious about what life in Ukraine is like, just her being from somewhere else, and they’re all super eager to introduce her to all the things that they love about being here in Bend or the U.S. in general,” he said.

Compared to Ukraine, Anhelina said the trails and facilities were “much better,” and the training was “different.” Asked what her skiing goals were, she said she just wanted to train. She prefers skating in the winter and classic ski training in the summer.

“I like that it’s a very long ski season,” Anhelina said of Mt. Bachelor specifically.

Her mother elaborated on their U.S. experience so far.

“First and foremost, as a mom and as a former athlete, I want safety for my kids, which is above and beyond what we experienced in Ukraine,” Yuliia said. “Second, the equipment and the facilities and, of course, the trails… the availability of all of those, to provide opportunities for children to train in a safe and enriching environment.”

She explained that when Anhelina was a child, she and her teammates built their own trails, carrying tools to practice.

“In the winter, a little wall of the kids would line up and groom the trail with their skis so they could skate,” Yuliia added, explaining how the kids side-stepped to pack down the snow. They had never experienced grooming like at Mt. Bachelor.

“We’re in awe of the level of the trails here and just really appreciate that they’re groomed and ready every morning,” she said.

“The people we’ve been in contact with are all very wonderful and good-hearted,” Yulia said of the Bend community. “They really care for our family and situation. I’m sure they also care about the rest of the world the way they care for us.”

Hodgert described Anhelina as a “fantastic addition” to the MBSEF program, which boasts over 200 athletes.

“Having Anhelina join our team has been a great worldly learning experience for the athletes, and in exchange, we’ve been able to provide her with a space where she can hone her craft,” he said. “We intend to support [her family] as long as they’re here. That might be just this year, it might be two years, three, five, we don’t really know. But as long as Anhelina wants to be skiing and wants to be in Bend, we’ll be supporting her.”