Children from Irpin and Bucha — cities that endured occupation — back on the podium: 15 medals at one tournament
Athletes of the "Vulkan" club returned from the Kiev Open Cup with 15 medals. Two years after the de-occupation, the team has become one of the most consistent youth taekwondo squads in the Kyiv region.
By Tetiana Suchkova-Ladik
April 5, 2026 · 2 min read
On April 4, 2026, the open All-Ukrainian WTF taekwondo tournament "Kiev Open Cup" took place in Kyiv. According to the organizers, the competition gathered over 500 athletes from 79 teams from eight regions of Ukraine.
Among the participants were 34 trainees of the Irpin-Bucha club "Vulkan" under the guidance of coach Feliks Chekalovets. The team won 15 awards: 2 gold, 4 silver and 9 bronze medals.
Who stood on the podium
The tournament champions were Emilia Chekalovets and Kyrylo Mykhailyuk. Silver medals were won by Bohdana Matsko, Ulyana Yankovska, Anna Mykhailova and Emilia Dzhuma. Bronze remained with nine club athletes.
Notably, Emilia Chekalovets and Anna Mykhailova are graduates who already have a Ukrainian Championship gold to their name: both previously won as members of the Kyiv Oblast team at the national level.
What lies behind the numbers
The club "Vulkan" is based in Irpin and Bucha — cities that were under Russian occupation in March–April 2022. Training fully resumed only after the deoccupation, and infrastructure was rebuilt gradually. The current team is mostly children born in 2017: they were five years old when the full-scale invasion began.
"The team from Irpin and Bucha represented their cities and Kyiv Oblast with dignity"
— MistoInform, following the results of the "Lviv Open Cup", March 2026
In recent months this was already Vulkan's third major start: in March the team of 15 athletes took 11 medals at the "Lviv Open Cup", including second place in the combined team standings together with the club "Imperator". Before that — the Kyiv Oblast Championship in Bucha, where 28 athletes won 14 awards.
- Lviv Open Cup (March 2026): 15 athletes — 11 medals (4 gold)
- Kyiv Oblast Championship (Bucha): 28 athletes — 14 medals
- Kiev Open Cup (April 2026): 34 athletes — 15 medals (2 gold)
Thus, over a few months the club fielded almost twice as many competitors at events and maintained a similar medal yield — about one medal for every two participants.
Sport as recovery infrastructure
Regular participation in national tournaments for communities affected by the war is not only a sporting result. It is a signal of the restoration of everyday life: there are halls, there are coaches, there are parents who can take a child to compete in another city. For Irpin and Bucha, where part of the infrastructure is still being rebuilt, this logistics is not a given.
If "Vulkan" maintains the pace of attracting new athletes — and the squad increased by more than twofold across the three tournaments — the next real test will not be the number of medals, but whether any of these children will appear on the Ukrainian national team at international events before the end of the 2028 Olympic cycle.
