He’s also an avid tennis player and on trips he often brings along his racquet and looks for someone with whom he can play.
In the capital city of Dushanbe, he went to a local tennis center and asked if he could find a playing partner.
When the manager pointed to Diana Ivanikhina, a short, unassuming young woman a half court away, he briefly hesitated: “I was like ‘Aaah… well….okay.’
“Usually, I play with a local trainer or the pro, someone who is really a strong hitter.”
He said she surprised him when, “She got every shot I hit at her. She was tremendous!”
And yet that wasn’t the biggest surprise he got.
The teenager became his regular tennis partner during his stay and often, after they played, they’d sit and talk.
She told him how she’d discovered tennis while she and her older brother had been living in an orphanage two hours away. Her beloved mother had been trying to resolve financial and health issues and get their family back together when she died unexpectedly at just 49.
Diana knew almost nothing about her dad. He’d never been part of the family.
She hasn’t seen him since she was eight and now says one of the only conversations she remembers having with him left her unsettled:
“He was a very strong Muslim and he told me, ‘When you get a little older, I’m going to cover you with a hijab and a dress (a burqa).”
Tajikistan is a Muslim nation. Nearly 98 percent of the people practice Islam. But she was living in an orphanage run by Christians.
She’d been 14 when her mom died and the loss sent her spiraling downward:
“I didn’t want to go to school, play tennis, do anything. I was angry at God, and asked him, ‘Why did you do this to me?’”
Eventually, she embraced the Lord, her Christian faith grew, and she again was immersed in tennis.
She said she’d seen people playing it when she and other kids were taken to a sports center as a reward for doing well in school, handling chores and other positive behavior:
“It looked like fun and wanted to try it.”
She eventually was given an old racquet, but with no one to really teach her, she found a Russian guy on YouTube giving tennis tutorials. She’d watch those clips endlessly, then go outside and practice what she’d learned for five or six hours at a time.
When she finally left the orphanage at 16 and returned to Dushanbe, she lived for a while with friends and then slept on a couch in the tennis center, McKee said.
He shared this tale by phone from his home in Seattle the other day.
Diana did some of the same when we sat together and talked on the campus at Cedarville University where she is now the No. 1 singles player on the Yellow Jackets’ women’s tennis team and, in her two previous years at the NCAA Division II Christian school, won All-Great Midwest Athletic Conference (G-MAC) second team honors and been named to the league’s All-Academic team.
The more you find out about her, the more you realize she has one of the most fascinating, far-flung – whether measuring in miles or mindset – stories in all of college sports.
She has risen from little promise to glorious possibility not only because of her drive and innate skill, but especially due to her strong, unwavering faith.
And there also have been several wonderful guardian angels who have guided, protected and challenged her.
Along with McKee, who has been her greatest benefactor; there are Joe and Jayne McKanna, a school teacher couple from Bowling Green who remain like adoptive parents; and Mike Bonnell, the Bowling Green tennis coach who gave her her first athletic chance in the U.S. and remains her friend and confidante.
‘Like a miracle’
“I have my mom’s picture on my phone, but I don’t carry a physical photo or have one in my room because then people will ask me about her and it’s just too hard for me to talk about,” Diana said as the welling-emotion began to make her voice waver.
She said she and her mother had been especially close:
“We never had a lot. For a while me, my (older) brother and our mom all lived in one room we rented in a house. My mom worked as a waitress and cleaned people’s houses.”
When her mother fell on hard times, she said her aunt, who’s a Christian (which make up just .7 percent of the population in Tajikistan) got them into the orphanage connected to her church.
It was in Kulob, two hours from Dushanbe.
“I’d call my mom 20 times a day just to talk about what we were doing,” Diana said.
“She always felt super guilty and would say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m a bad mom because I can’t take care of you.’
“I’d say, ‘Mom, don’t worry about it. Everything will be OK. This is a hard time, but it won’t be forever. We’ll all be back together again.’”
But then came September 4, 2017.
“My mom was sick, but she didn’t know how bad it was with her liver and other organs,” Diana said. “She had an attack in the little room she was living in and there wasn’t anyone there to help her.
“Like always I was calling her, but that day I got no answer. After school, the couple who ran the orphanage told me and my brother to get some stuff together and we were going to Dushanbe. They didn’t say anything else.
“I was excited I was going to see my mom. But I kept calling and got no answer and soon the phone was shut off. I must have called 50 times.
“When we got to Dushanbe, my aunt and her husband were there and they were sad. Finally, my aunt brought us back to her room and we sat on the bed.”
Diana’s voice dropped to a near whisper: “I can picture it like it was a couple of days ago. She said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you, but your mom isn’t here anymore.’
“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ I was scared and started crying.”
That following year, back at the orphanage, she began to more fully embrace the Lord and that gave her solace and purpose while tennis gave her an outlet, though it did come with its own set of problems and provocations.
“When I’d go to practice in shorts and a shirt, some of the older guys would look weird at me and judge me and scold me,” she said.
“It’s a very Muslim country and many of the women are covered. The guys would say to me, “’Shame on you! Shame on your parents!’
“They’d curse me and say bad things about my faith, like, ‘You Christians are all alike. You are the worst people in the world.’”
McKee said the more he talked to her – they conversed in Russian, which Diana spoke along with her native Tajik language – the more he was impressed by her.
She invited him to her church for Easter services and eventually he began to think she would be a good addition to the tennis team at some college in the U.S.
The idea intrigued her and when he left for America he said he’d try to do what he could to help make that happen.
Back in Seattle, where he lives with his wife – their three daughters are grown and living on their own – McKee, who’s now 71, discovered finding a college on such short notice for someone on the other side of the world with few tennis credentials was next to impossible.
He hired a recruiting consultant, who had similar luck until an opening appeared “like a miracle” he said.
Mike Bonnell, Bowling Green’s new coach, discovered a hole in the roster he inherited and saw there was an unused scholarship for just the coming spring semester
“I put a Facebook post out to see if anybody was crazy enough to take a scholarship for just one semester to play Division I tennis,” he said. “I explained we wouldn’t be able to give it to them the following year because it already was promised. But I said I’d help them find a new school.
“And Diana was crazy enough to say she’d take it.”
That was easier said than done. There was great difficulty getting her transcripts. And she had to pass an English proficiency test and try to get a visa. The red tape and dead ends nearly derailed the dream.
But finally on New Year’s Eve Diana flew by herself to Frankfort, Germany and slept in the airport. The next day she flew to Detroit.
She knew no one, could speak only a few English words and had to check herself into a hotel and await a ride to Bowling Green the next day.
She knew nothing about college life and little about America.
“I’d never heard of Ohio,” she said.
She does remember seeing one American movie in Tajikistan.
It was “Home Alone” — which in some ways was a good primer for her.
She arrived on a Bowling Green campus that was vacated for Christmas break. On her first Sunday there she Googled “Baptist Church,” found one and then walked 90-minutes through the freezing cold and snow to get there.
That’s where she met Joe and Jayne McKanna. He’s a social studies and geography teacher at Patrick Henry High School and she teaches fifth grade language arts at Northwood Elementary.
Their two sons had gone to Cedarville: Micah ran cross country and track for the school and now lives in Beavercreek and Tad lives in Mason and is about to move to Springboro.
The couple made a connection with Diana who began visiting their home after Sunday service and then lived with them in the summer.
“I’ve never met anybody quite like her,” Jayne said. “She’s remarkable.”
And Jayne said BG’s coach Mike Bonnell is “a real treasure” for the way he embraced Diana and worked endless hours to help her adjust on and off the court.
“Her skill set was pretty good – especially when you consider she taught herself off YouTube videos,” he said. “She was a little raw, but she was the hardest worker on the team and just a great team leader.
“And she won some crucial matches for us that we otherwise would have lost.”
When the spring semester ended, she focused on Cedarville. Not only had the McKanna’s sons gone there, but so had the pastor of the First Baptist Church and his wife.
The church had several other connections to the school and finally the Yellow Jackets’ new head coach, Karl Monson, offered her a scholarship.
‘My bigger calling’
After practicing her faith in a low key, almost underground setting in Tajikistan, Diana was overwhelmed the first time she went to chapel service at Cedarville and saw the place jammed with 3,400 singing students.
“I began to shake and cry,” she said quietly. “It was beautiful.”
At Cedarville, she said she has grown in her faith, her academics and in her tennis.
She is one of the best players in the G-MAC and yet she said tennis is secondary to her:
“It’s the platform I can use to reach my bigger calling.”
After one more year of schooling, but no more athletic eligibility after this spring, she plans to do missionary work.
While she contemplates the future, she doesn’t forget the past.
“I like to journal, and I write letters in it to my mom,” she said softly, “I sign them ‘Your daughter.’”
In those epistles, she often tells her mother what she is doing now.
Today, in fact, she is ministering to the women prisoners in the Clark County jail.
“She deserves every opportunity she gets here because she is just such a good person who wants to help others,” McKee said. “She believes in the United States so much. She’s a terrific addition to our country as so many immigrants are. That’s what makes America such a fascinating place.
“She’s just someone you can’t help but believe in.”
Bonnell agreed: “She has taken a situation that could have been very bleak and really made a life for herself.
“In retrospect I wish we would have kept her here. She was so good for our team. We miss her leadership, her sense of humor and just her goodness.”
As he thought about her, he shared one more reminder:
“Before she left, she gave me a gift. A miniature version of Tajik socks. They’re the national socks.”
Knitted from goat’s and lamb’s wool, they’re called Pamiri Jurabs, and are multi-colored and filled with meaningful national symbols.
“I’ve got mine hanging on my rearview mirror,” Bonnell said. “I won’t take them down because it would feel weird to do that now.
“They remind me of her. So, she’s still part of the Bowling Green team. I won’t ever forget her.”
Like with David McKee, she was not what he expected.
She was so much better.
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