Falmouth Tennis Pro Opens Home To Ukrainian Pro And Golfer Son
During the week following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, tennis teaching professional Kevin Pease wondered what he could do to help.
The West Falmouth resident and on-and-off Airbnb host knew what he had to offer: a safe place to stay, some extra beds and a yearning to do something good for someone in need. So, without so much as a second thought, he fired off five emails to Ukrainian-based tennis pros and teachers offering his home to anyone who needed it, plus the chance to play some tennis at his private tennis school. Then, he waited.
Three days later, on March 6, Maryna Bilonozhko replied: “Help is needed.”
The 46-year-old tennis pro told Mr. Pease that her son, Timur Alalin, 16, was safe in Bulgaria, but she was hiding out with her sister at a school-turned-bomb shelter in Kyiv, Ukraine. Communicating through WhatsApp, Mr. Pease told Ms. Bilonozhko that if they were able to leave Ukraine, she and her son were welcome to stay with him at his home.
Sixteen days later, at 1 o’clock on a Tuesday morning, Mr. Pease met the former top-five Ukrainian tennis pro and her son at Boston Logan International Airport and brought them “home” to Falmouth.
“I don’t even know really what prompted me. I guess Airbnb to a degree,” Mr. Pease said. “I said to myself, ‘I’m tired, I don’t want to do that anymore…but I’ve still got these extra beds here, no one’s in there.’ I feel like if that happened to me, if I was in that country, I would want someone to reach out to me.”
Mr. Pease joked that he switched from Airbnb to AirRefugee, but even as a lighthearted quip, that sentiment is solid—rather than continue to try to squeeze a profit out of something that he was no longer enjoying, Mr. Pease thought it was more worthwhile to use those assets to help in a unique way that fit his niche while also serving the greater good.
“And without going through a national or international corporation, I did it,” he said.
Ms. Bilonozhko and her son arrived in the United States after a two-day journey that led them to Romania and then west, from Frankfurt toward Washington, DC, before landing in Boston in the early hours of March 22. A generous but unknown American had taken to Facebook, Mr. Pease explained, and had offered their air miles to Ukrainian refugees looking for a free ride out of the country.
Mr. Pease wrote in his blog that the mother and son each arrived with one medium luggage bag and a set of golf clubs for Timur.
In addition to being a gifted tennis player, Timur was just 15 years old when he won the 2021 Ukrainian Open Amateur Golf Championship, and he is one of Ukraine’s top-ranked golfers. While in Falmouth, Timur was able to golf all over the Upper Cape—Woods Hole Golf Club, Cape Cod Golf Club and the Ridge Club, to name a few, with the likes of former PGA pro Michael Harney, Jeff Halunen of Pocasset Golf Club, and Glenn Kelly of Woods Hole Golf Club.
“For him, you know, he enjoys golf, but not in the way somebody would go out for 18 holes on a weekend,” Mr. Pease said. “This is a job for him because he has a dream to become a professional golfer.”
While in Falmouth, Ms. Bilonozkho engaged in her athletic passions as well, visiting the Kevin Pease School of Tennis with Mr. Pease and his son Eric, who is also a tennis pro and coaches boys’ varsity tennis at Falmouth High School.
“Maryna came and helped volunteer during some of my clinics with the kids and adults when she was here,” Mr. Pease said. “She met some other people who could speak Russian that were in my classes. You could see they shared some moments together, so that was nice.”
Mr. Pease himself learned a bit of Russian, which he said is easily understood by Ukrainians. Phrases like “good morning” or “good night” came in handy, as did words like “dog,” which he presumably used to introduce his coonhound, Mandy.
“It’s amazing if you learn just a few words, you can put them together in ways that sound funny, and everyone gets a kick out of it,” he said.
While sharing a home, it was also easy to share a blend of cultures. After missing the mark on breakfast during their first morning together—as it turns out, his guests didn’t like eggs, sausage, and peppers for breakfast—Mr. Pease relinquished many of the cooking duties to the eager Timur, who had a knack for not just pre-meal prep and cooking, but also for cleaning up.
“He said, ‘My mom works all day, and I do all of the stuff at home, and she pays for my golf,’” Mr. Pease said.
After a trip to the grocery store, Timur and Ms. Bilonozkho introduced Mr. Pease to a traditional Ukrainian dish that is made using rice, milk and sugar, along with some bread with cheese and boiled eggs for breakfast.
One evening, Mr. Pease said, the three of them watched a show together on Netflix that hit rather close to home. “Servant of the People,” a Ukrainian political satire from 2015, stars actor-turned-politician Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the president of Ukraine, a role he has filled off-screen since his election in 2019.
“They’re watching the movie, which is in Ukrainian, with English subtitles, so we’re all enjoying the movie together,” Mr. Pease said. “You could see that they really enjoyed it. They love him. And I never would’ve watched that, probably. And I should. I just wouldn’t think to, but I didn’t think I would do this either. We were just watching and laughing and talking about it.”
The mother and son duo stayed in Falmouth for about two weeks before embarking for California, but the relationship they have forged with Mr. Pease will likely last much longer, he said.
“They became like family,” he said. “I suspect we’ll stay in touch because I think they feel that I’m a true friend and I’ve got their back.”
A few days before their departure for the West Coast, Mr. Pease set up a GoFundMe to help pay for the living expenses of Ms. Bilonozhko and Timur during their stay in California. They will be staying with Mike Moreland, director of the Junior Golf Association of Northern California, with whom Timur was put in touch at the recommendation of former PGA pro David Leadbetter. Their GoFundMe is close to its $10,000 goal now, having raised more than $7,500 since last week.
“It’s surreal in a way,” Mr. Pease said. “I couldn’t see the vision of what was going to happen. I had no idea what was going to happen or even if they were going to get out. I didn’t know.”
“I’m a bit impulsive at times…it’s not always something [everyone] would do,” Mr. Pease said. “Most people, I think, live insular lives. So when would you jump in? Would you jump in if it was Mexico? Would you jump in if it was Guatemala? What about Texas? Canada? Who would you jump in for? Would you jump in for Russia? Would you jump in for China? See, I wouldn’t have a problem with that because when you put people together, they’re the same. That’s the thing: everybody’s the same, we’re not different. We live in different cultures [but] that’s like living in a different neighborhood, really. It doesn’t matter. People are the same, and they laugh about the same things.”