By Jim Fenton

BRIDGEWATER, Mass. -- He is one of several hundred student-athletes competing on a Bridgewater State University team in the 2024-25 academic year.

Oleksandr Lysyi is a freshman on the Bears' men's swimming & diving squad while studying cybersecurity.

Lysyi, however, is not exactly just another BSU student-athlete getting adjusted to life on a college campus.

He is doing so while worrying about life back in his native Ukraine, which had been fighting off an invasion by Russia since Feb. 24, 2022.

Lysyi, who goes by Olek, and his parents, Volodymyr and Nina, left Ukraine behind and moved to Massachusetts in 2023.

Olek finished his final year of high school at Diman Regional Vocational in Fall River, the city where the family lived for a year, graduating last spring.

His parents have since moved to Boston while Olek enrolled at Bridgewater State for this fall semester.

Olek departed Ukraine just three days before Russian invasion in the winter of '22, moving to Poland where he was attending international high school.

Volodymyr was in the Netherlands at the time where he was working, so Nina was home alone in Irpin, not far from Kyiv, when the invasion began.

Eventually, she was able to escape the war-torn nation after being close to the bombings.

The Lysyi family has made Massachusetts home since the summer of '23 and Olek is enjoying his freshman year at BSU.

But what is happening in Ukraine where Russia is trying to overtake the country is a constant presence in his mind.

"It's really bad," said Olek. "We don't share about it, but it's hard. When it comes to daily basic things, it's really hard. Some people survive, but it's hard.

"My body is here, but my heart is there. I am understanding where I am and what I'm doing here. All I can do is represent Ukraine here. It's my motherland. You can't choose your neighbors (Russia)."

Lysyi graduated from Diman last spring and applied to Bridgewater State where a friend from the Fall River high school had previously been accepted.

Lysyi was also accepted and made his way to the Bridgewater campus in September.

"I didn't expect it was going to be this supportive and this good," he said. "I like it a lot here."

The idea to try out for the swimming & diving team was a surprising one since Lysyi had never been a competitive swimmer at any point in his life.

But a knee injury prevented him from playing any more soccer, something he did at Diman, so Lysyi decided to give swimming a try.

"Never swam a length in his life until he came to us," said Bears coach Michael Caruso. "He works hard. He's willing to learn and he's got a lot of strength and a lot of desire.

"He's got another gear. By the time he leaves here, he's probably going to be one of our top men's swimmers."

Lysyi has only been swimming with the team for a few months, but he is making strides in the 50 and 100 freestyle and the 50 butterfly.

At the recent BSU Invitational, Lysyi finished third in the 50 butterfly, fifth in the 50 freestyle and sixth in the 100 freestyle.

"All my life, I've done sports," he said. "But last year, I had problems with my knees. I was playing soccer at Diman. My doctor told me I needed to switch sports because one more injury like this and I will have to have surgery.

"I started searching for sports here in college. My parents told me I should try swimming because it's good for your body. I talked to coach and told him I never swam before. I didn't have any professional background. He told me not to worry about it, he was going to teach me to do stuff.

"It's a big adjustment. I had to use muscles I never used. All the stretches and techniques, it takes a while to learn. I took it seriously. We had some progress."

Lysyi misses soccer, but he likes being part of the BSU swimming & diving team.

"I met new people," he said. "It distracts you from a lot of things. It helps your mental health. While you're tired from the pool, you're not tired from life. It helps mentally."

Asked what he would have said if someone told him six months ago that he'd be on a swimming team, Lysyi said, "I would have laughed in their face. In September, I had never swam before and my friend told me, 'You're going to be the next Michael Phelps.' I had no idea who Michael Phelps was. I had no idea about swimming."

Lysyi's father is working in Boston and the mother is there, safe after being so close to the war back home.

"She couldn't escape," said Lysyi. "It was like hell for her. For a whole week, she was there with the bombs. She was lucky to get out. Thank God she was lucky to finally escape.

"The first year (out), she was afraid of fireworks and the first month she was afraid of planes. The Russians, when they were bombing, we didn't know if it was our plane or their plane. It was a loud sound and it was scaring her. It was really bad for her."

When Nina did get out of Ukraine, her husband drove from the Netherlands to Romania to pick her up after she got over the border.

The parents then went to Poland to see Olek before going to Switzerland to stay with friends for a year while the son remained in school.

As the war raged, Olek was posting on social media from Poland about what was happening in his native land, and a Diman history teacher, Ashley Duffany, began following along.

She then relayed the information from him about the Ukraine war to her students in Fall River.

Duffany then got in contact with Lysyi, and eventually, along with her husband, helped get the Lysyi family to Fall River where they found an apartment while Olek finished high school.

Lysyi is looking forward to a four-year stay at BSU. He is unsure about ever returning to Ukraine, a place he hasn't seen since February 2022.

"I don't know," said Lysyi. "It's a really hard question. I want to, but it's not going to be the same Ukraine as before, unfortunately. It's not going to be my city because 80 percent of my city was destroyed by Russians."